Korle Bu suspends mortuary services for refurbishment

The Korle Bu Teaching Hospital (KBTH) has temporarily suspended accepting fresh dead bodies and Brought-in-Dead (BID) cases to allow for a six-week refurbishment of its mortuary facilities.

The hospital urged bereaved families, whose deceased relatives had been in the mortuary for three to six weeks, to make immediate arrangements for burial or transfer them to alternative facilities.

The refurbishment of the 600-capacity cold room is aimed at enhancing service delivery at the facility. 

Refurbishment

The facelift, which started yesterday, involves servicing and replacing some parts of the cold rooms.

The management of the hospital announced its decision to suspend taking in fresh bodies and BID cases from last Monday.

It said the refurbishment was necessary to ensure better service delivery at the country’s premier tertiary healthcare facility.
 

Transfer of bodies

The Head of Public Relations of the Korle Bu Teaching Hospital, Mustapha Salifu, in an interview with the Daily Graphic, explained that the hospital was not shutting down the cold room facility during the period but was rather restricting services from taking bodies from other health facilities.

He urged the public to cooperate with the hospital to help ensure a smooth renovation exercise.

He revealed that people had already begun transferring their deceased relatives to other facilities.

Mr Salifu expressed the hope that more people would adhere to the directive.

“People are coming in and we hope that by the end of the day, we will have more people doing the same," he said.

He stated that the hospital would follow up with a phone call to relatives or next-of-kin in case of unclaimed bodies.

“We have a system where when we keep a body for a period, we announce and advertise for bereaved families to claim bodies, if that does not happen, we get city authorities for the burial of such bodies. However, this is different.

“We have details of the deceased person's next of kin so we place a call and get them informed,” he said.

He reiterated that the restriction did not apply to cases originating from KBTH itself but said bereaved families whose relatives had been in the mortuary for three to six weeks or longer must make arrangements for burial or transfer to alternative facilities.
 

Apology

He rendered an unqualified apology to the public and said the move was to enhance the services of the cold room to be able to serve the public better.

“We sincerely apologise for any inconvenience this may cause and appreciate your cooperation as we work to enhance our services.

“We need the full cooperation of the public to successfully embark on the refurbishment,” he said.