Corpses are accumulating in Zimbabwean mortuaries because the country’s last forensic pathologist has resigned, the government confirmed on Monday.
Since Alex Mapunda resigned last May there have been no qualified forensic pathologists in Zimbabwe, and about 30 corpses are being stored in mortuaries awaiting forensic testing.
This in turn delays the trials of the people suspected of murdering them.
”That isn’t our fault,” said the Zimbabwe government’s chief surgical officer, Max Hove.
”Yes, the bodies that require that service have been piling up since the last forensic pathologist resigned. We are not experts and there is nothing we can do about it.”
Hove said forensic tests had to be done on people who died ”in violent circumstances regarded by the police as murder”.
Until the tests are done, relatives of the victims were not able to bury their dead.
Fourteen corpses of suspected murder victims lie waiting in Harare’s sprawling Parirenyatwa Hospital alone.
In recent years hundreds of Zimbabwean doctors and nurses have moved to foreign countries, particularly South Africa and the United Kingdom, eating away at a once-impressive national health service. – Sapa