Ebola In Liberia: Burial Teams Accepting Bribes To Leave Infected Corpses With Relatives

Tuesday, October 14, 2014

A woman mourning as the body of a relative who died from Ebola is taken away by a body retrieval team. 

(Getty Images)

Some workers who are assigned the task of retrieving corpses of Ebolavictims in Liberia have reportedly started accepting cash to leave behind bodies and fake death reports at the request of the bereaved families

Some burial teams sent to retrieve bodies of Ebola victims inLiberia have reportedly started accepting bribes to leave the infected corpses behind.

The corrupt workers also issue fake death certificates to the victims’ families to say that the deceased died from another cause and not Ebola, the Wall Street Journal reports.

Corpses of Ebola victims are a main source of infection and a number of cases have been traced to burial ceremonies held for a person who died of the disease.

Relatives of victims also attempt to keep the bodies of their loved ones to give them a proper burial according to Liberian customs and to keep them from being cremated.

Andrew Medina-Marino, an epidemiologist at South Africa’s University, in confirming the allegations, said he had received reports of Ebola-response teams accepting bribes from relatives to leave behind infected corpses so they could be washed and buried.

 He said:

“Low-level corruption has a high-level impact,”

Commissioner Hawa Johnson of Caldwell Township also said that she had received reports of body-retrieval teams offering to sell fake death certificates to desperate relatives in the community to enable them get burial permits.

Further confirmation comes from community outreach worker,Vincent Chounse who reportedly said that he had seen negotiations for the fake certificates being made first-hand.

He said:

 “The family says the person is not an Ebola patient and they pull them away from the other people.”

Then they say, ‘We can give you a certificate from the Ministry of Health that it wasn’t Ebola,’ ”

“Sometimes it is $40. Sometimes it is $50. Then they offer bags to them and [the family] carry on their own thing.”

Health workers in the troubled nation have also threatened to strike if the government doesn’t increase their hazard pay from less than $500 to $700.

Liberia has suffered the most from the current Ebola outbreak recording more than 2000 casualties since March.