Deadly alert as criminals buy viruses from mortuaries

Police officers  guard a body at the  Chiromo Mortuary. [PHOTOS: FILE/STANDARD]

By Paul Wafula
Kenya: Criminals are now buying deadly viruses from mortuaries in what brings a new dimension to the underground body parts business thriving inside Kenya’s funeral homes.

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Highly infectious human tissue, body fluids and used bath water are eclipsing human organs as the hottest selling products.
Morgue staff drawn from Nairobi’s three largest mortuaries interviewed for this story reveal how lack of regulation and weak enforcement has seen players in the sector break ethics of last respects to make an extra coin.
Attendants are earning between Sh5,000 to Sh100,000 to smuggle out pieces of the dead, wrapped in specimen bags, briefcases and envelopes.
They also swap specimen to tilt police investigations from those seeking to change evidence of a case.
“The common ones are blood samples for people who die in road accidents under the influence of alcohol and their lawyers or relatives don’t want this to affect their insurance claim,” an attendant said.
“We just swap blood samples with someone else who did not die while drunk. We can get the blood from the heart and label it, then hand it to the police,” he added.
Swap samples
Multiple sources within Nairobi’s biggest public morgues told how a combination of poor pay and laxity in monitoring has pushed the morgue attendants to go to deadly lengths to earn illegal cash.
Kenyatta National Hospital (KNH), City Mortuary and Mbagathi District Hospital have mortuaries located within a 300 metres radius that arguably host Kenya’s largest concentration of unburied bodies.
The practice they say is fueled by poor pay on one hand and a growing underground market drawn mainly from witchdoctors and their followers. “Most of my clients are just ordinary men and women on the street. But I have also sold some items to members of the military and police,” an attendant at KNH, who previously worked at City Mortuary told in confidence. But what is likely to worry policy makers is the revelation that some of their clients are specifically asking for specimen from victims of highly infectious diseases including Hepatitis B and Tuberculosis.