DEAD MORGUE Mochudi’s hospital mortuary dead Families forced to look for private help

Scores of families in Mochudi and surrounding areas have had to deal with a double blow of receiving bad news of the death of their loved ones in the Deborah Retief Memorial Hospital and that the hospital cannot temporarily keep the corpse.

The hospital mortuary has been dead for seven years now, offering no service to families of deceased persons who die in the hospital.

Hospital mortuaries usually help to hold bodies for a limited period while relatives absorb the bad news of their loved ones and decide together on which private mortuary to use. For now that decision has to be made immediately after getting the bad news.

Currently according to the Hospital Superintendent, Dr Boago Didimalang, any deaths taking place in DRM hospital means relatives have to immediately arrange to take their deceased loved one to a private mortuary, something that is not always possible.

According to Dr Didimalang, this has created a challenge for the hospital because in the event that the family cannot immediately make arrangements with private mortuaries, it creates a challenge. “The hospital often has deaths of people whom their relatives can’t be traced and in fact it has happened before that the staff members had to pay private mortuaries while relatives are being traced,” he said, adding that often it is difficult to get assistance from nearby hospitals due to congestion and dysfunction of their mortuaries as well.

Sometimes, according to Dr Didimalang, relatives may delay to collect corpses especially during odd hours and this gives hospital staff a challenge and increases the risk of corpses decomposing in the wards, especially during hot summer periods.

Dr Didimalang told The Midweek Sun that the mortuary equipment is technically obsolete and needs replacement having been inherited from the Dutch Reformed church in 2005 by the Ministry. In addition, all the equipment also needs replacement or refurbishment after being in service for many years.

The Ministry of Health and Wellness is aware of the status of the hospital mortuary, as it has been lying idle for seven years. During this time there has been several communications to the ministry of health about the issue, with several contractors sent to work on it but to no avail.

The previous Ministry of Health facility management, Stobech was engaged in the mortuary before. There has been engagement of DBES, Mochudi Depot before as well but none bare fruits.

Dr Didimalang says the delay in resolving the problem is attributed to change of maintenance of facility management responsibilities from the former FM Contractor, Stobech to the newly formed MOHW-FM Unit that was expected to take responsibility for all FM functions. “This came with a comprehensive report and dossier detailing out all national works (accomplished and non-accomplished including audit reports). This was to prepare for new contractors who became G4 Consultancy. Their settlement started with them assessing all the facilities in the district (condition audit survey), and are now just starting to address them,” Dr Didimalang says.

The Ministry of Health has recently engaged another facility management consultancy company (G4 Consultancy), which has completed the condition audit survey of the facilities (including the mortuary) and will be engaging relevant contractors on the maintenance/works on the mortuary.

Currently hospital mortuary attendants have been re-deployed as porters at the hospitals Accident and Emergency department. They still assist pathologists with post-mortems in Gaborone.

For the period of two years, 30 August 2019 to 30 August 2020, the hospital has had 528 deaths.