Police in Mbarara are investigating two men for alleged theft of dead bodies at Mbarara Regional Referral Hospital.

They have been identified as Robert Mucunguzi, an employee at Urban Funeral Services, and Andrew Ainomugisha of Miles Funeral Services.

They were arrested at Mbarara Regional Referral Hospital.

Halson Kagure, the Mbarara Regional Referral Hospital Public Relations Officer, said the duo was apprehended by the hospital security team as they moved from ward to ward in search of clients who could have lost their loved ones.

It has been revealed that the suspects have been in the habit of wandering at various hospitals, luring caretakers to hand over bodies of their deceased relatives from the hospitals immediately after they have passed on, without going through prescribed hospital procedures.

Kagure explains that normally, all the bodies of the patients who die under hospital care are supposed to pass through the mortuary for documentation after all the last processes have been completed in the ward where the death occurred.

When the duo was interrogated, they revealed that they had been deployed by their paymasters (owners of funeral homes) to the hospital, targeting the bodies of deceased patients before they were delivered from the wards to the hospital mortuary.

For this service, the duo revealed that they are paid a commission of Sh. 200,000, if they can persuade the relatives to snatch the body from the ward and take it straight to the funeral home.

Dr Raymond Atwine, the head of the Pathology Department at Mbarara Regional Referral Hospital, says the vice of brokering bodies on the ward before being taken to and registered in the mortuary books has been going on for a long time.

He blamed it squarely on the funeral homes in Mbarara City, who connived with special-hire-drivers to execute the mission.

He explains that it is a normal procedure, that when a patient dies in the hospital ward, a Medical Certificate of Cause of Death (MCCD) is issued by a licensed and practising doctor, to accompany the body to the mortuary for proper identification.

This document is then passed to the Medical Records Department of the hospital to process a death certificate by the National Information and Records Authority (NIRA).

From the mortuary, the body is processed according to the wishes of the relatives and handed over to them with a gate pass, with the document that allows the relatives to transport the body to its final resting place.

If the above procedures are not followed, it becomes difficult for the hospital to process the crucial documents for the issuance of the death certificate by NIRA.

This will involve retrieving the deceased patient’s medical records and looking for the doctors, who attended to the patient, and asking them to issue the MCCD in retrospect.

Snatching bodies from the wards of the hospital without thorough preparations can put the lives of the general public in danger of contracting infectious diseases that the patient may have died of while s/he was alive, cautions Dr. Atwine.

According to Samson Kasasira, the Rwizi Region Police Spokesperson, the two suspects were taken to Mbarara Central Police and are now assisting the police with investigations concerning their clandestine activities in the hospital.

Kasasira condemned the funeral homes’ modus operandi but is optimistic the ongoing crackdown will bring them to their knees.

Recently, while appearing on the media, Dr. Celestine Barigye, the Hospital Director of Mbarara Referral Hospital and Regional Director of Health Services in Western Uganda, was tasked to explain the allegations of charging for mortuary services, where he revealed that they are free of charge.

Dr. Barigye did not however deny the allegations, adding that they were doing whatever it takes to crack a whip on whoever is trading smear campaigns.

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Story Credit: Godfrey Tugume, Chimp Reports