Alarming rates of missing corpses in Cameroon Morgues

There has been an alarming rate of missing corpses and sometimes parts of corpses reported in some mortuaries in Cameroon recently. And majority of such cases came from Hospitals in Douala – the country’s economic capital also noted for harboring the country’s largest mortuaries.Cognizant of the fact that access into some of the Hospitals hosting morgues are closely monitored by security guards and mortuary attendants who also list all incoming and retrieved corpses inhabitants have no other option than to suspect foul play when corpses are being declared missing. However the administration had not been adamant in the matter. Gounoko Haounaye, littoral provincial governor recently announced severe crackdown against the rather disturbing notion of missing corpses at morgues across his area of command. His announcement came on the eve of the suspected disappearance of the corpse of one Sadrack Ewane, from the morgue of the Deido District Hospital in Douala. After going through all the normal formalities the corpse of Sadrack Ewane, who died a couple of months ago was deposited at the morgue by family members pending burial arrangements. “The corpse was kept in section E9”, says a family member who brandished a ticket to confirm his claims. But the family was taken aback when they arrived the morgue on 13th July, and did not find the remains of their dead one. Not even the name of the deceased person was found either on the list of corpses in the morgue or on those that had left the morgue within the period that family members transported that of Sadrack. After a thorough search up to other mortuaries in the town managed by the same company gave no positive results, family members did not only accused workers at the morgue for foul play buy also raised hell it the corpse of their dead one was not found. The incident had also frustrated all burial arrangements that had been finalized.Apparently to cool the heat generated by the family the matter was immediately reported to the Gendarmerie Brigade, in Deido which opened up investigations. So far some five mortuary attendants at the Hospital have been arrested for questioning and are currently in detention at the Brigade, to help the Gendarmes in their investigations. They include; Qumock Jules, Jean Pierre Mfoundi, David Kegne, Etienne Disake and Felix Edimo, whom after refusing that they did not receive the corpse of Sadrack, later admitted, but claimed not to know anything about its disappearance, thereby paving way for more suspicion that they might have sold the corpse to some human parts dealers or for cultic purposes. It should be noted here that suspicion of human body parts or whole-corpse trafficking, through the complicity of some mortuary attendants, has been high in Cameroon and especially Douala. Besides trafficking, in some cases unfound corpses have been mistakenly carried away by other relatives either due to negligence over their job on the part of the attendants or intentionally doing so for kickbacks. These have lead to situations whereby families have been obliged to unearth interred corpses not belonging to them weeks after burial. Similarly people have been caught with human parts taken from graves in some cemeteries. A recent case is that of a man who was caught with bags of human bones exhumed from graves in a cemetery in Douala.

Courtesy - Harry Ndienla Yemti