Bara staff disciplined after corpse delay

FOUR hospital employees have been suspended after being implicated in an incident in which the body of a woman who died there was left to decompose so severely that a private undertaker refused to take it in.

Sowetan reported yesterday that staff at the Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital in Soweto only took the body of Bacebile Mbete, 18, to the morgue three days after she died.

Mbete died at the hospital last Friday following complications with an ectopic pregnancy.

“Four staff members have been suspended pending full investigations and disciplinary hearings being instituted against them,” said Gauteng department of health spokesman Prince Hamnca yesterday.

“This follows preliminary investigations around the transportation of the body from the ward to the mortuary and the manner in which it was kept; the department has come to a conclusion that some officials have a case to answer,” said Hamnca.

Mbete was admitted to the Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital last Thursday and died the following day.

Her grandfather, Raymond Zikalala, 82, said he identified her body that same day.

But when the family returned with a private undertaker on Tuesday, they found her body in a shocking state of decomposition.

This raised suspicions that the body had not been placed in the morgue, a statement that was confirmed by a family friend who called the hospital and was told that Mbete ’ s body arrived at the morgue three days after her death.

Jeffrey Zikalala, Mbete ’ s uncle, said all the family wanted was to give his niece a dignified funeral.

“They (the hospital mortuary) need to prepare her body put the right chemicals so we can have her here (at the house for the funeral) for at least an hour before heading to the cemetery, ” the uncle said.