Flood Sacks Mortuary: Attendants pile corpses on roof tops

THE  flood that  caused havoc across the country has sacked the General Hospital, Patani in Patani Local Government Area of Delta State, forcing officials to stack corpses  evacuated from the morgue on an emergency platform that had been inventively constructed  between the ceiling and roof of the endangered health institution.
Delta State Commissioner for Health, Dr. Joseph Otumara, confirmed, yesterday, that several other government hospitals were affected by the  flood, including the one in Patani, but said he had not received any  report concerning the movement of corpses.
However, coordinator of  the Rural Health Africa Initiative, RAHI, a  non-governmental organization, which is on ground,  catering for the  victims of  the flood  in Patani and surrounding communities, Dr.  Chris Ekiyor, told Sunday Vanguard, “We saw corpses from the morgue of the Patani hospital affected by the flood floating on the waters, some were standing leg deep in the flood, and others in different awkward position”.
He added, “This was at the initial stage of the flood, but I must commend the mortuary attendant and other officials of the hospital; they understood the effect of the corpses that were washed away by  the flood from the morgue, what I saw is not a mortuary, but they were embalming corpses there. They salvaged the corpses from the flood and loaded them up on an over-the –roof platform”.
Ekiyor, who spoke  at the RAHI Relief Camp for Flood Victims, situated at New Town, Patani, along the East-West Road, continued: “My concern, among other things,  is that there are many shallow graves in this area, and, besides drowned animals like dogs and goats, other dead bodies might have been dug up by the rampaging flood.
“Some of the villagers have not only been fishing in this contaminated body of water, but also cooking with it. It was not until we started educating them on the dangers of what they were doing that they stopped, because they took the floodwater as part of their normal river and were washing with it, fishing inside, bathing and cooking with it”.
The RAHI coordinator  pointed out that if not that the mortuary attendant in Patani hospital acted quickly, the floating corpses from the morgue would have been decomposing by now and formed part of the mass of the floodwater that the people were cooking and bathing with.

                                                     
“This is not a story, RAHI witnessed it, we have been here for more 22 days, there is no other group attending to the health of the victims of the disaster in this area, but us. We also know the kind of cases that the patients are presenting; there are more than 3,000 flood victims in our camp. We feed them and attend to their health problems.
Commissioner Otumara, who opined that there might not be an epidemic because of  the measures the state government  had put in place, said, “Many government hospitals in Patani, Bomadi, Ogriagbane and other communities were affected by the flood, but are we concerned, first and foremost, by the safety of the people. So, we moved them to government relief camps, there are about 20 of them, where doctors, nurses and other health officials attend to them”.
.................... Courtesy Vanguard newspaper