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.

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.

“Once you dissect, you break the lungs and if the patient died of TB, you find pus or some liquids.

You package this pus together with a small tissue in small bottles and this is taken away as specimen but it is actually human poison,” he said.

Doctors and pathologists reckon that such tissues are not just dangerous to the dealers but could also be risky to the recipients if mishandled.

“Hepatitis B is twice as infectious as HIV and depending on the immune status of the victims, it can be very deadly,” former Government Chief Pathologist Moses Njue said.

Highly infectious

He said such viruses could be used in doing research to make vaccines. “There are cases where victims have lost entire genital organs,” Dr Njue said. But he says for cases of witchcraft, the clients require complete organs.

“The level of infection depends on the freshness of the tissue. Any exchange of fluids including blood is highly infectious,” Dr Thomas Kariuki, the director of the Institute of Primate Research (IPR), said. IPR is the second largest research facility in the country after Kenya Medical Research Institute (KEMRI). It has access to animal models of human diseases in region.

“For the viruses like HIV, if well refrigerated, the body will remain infectious and three months down the line, the infection will be at 80 per cent. Hepatitis B is worse,” Dr Boniface Chitayi said. “If mixed with sweat, blood or other body tissues, then one is exposed,” Dr Chitayi says but reckons that the area lacks studies.

However, Sexuality and Reproductive Health Specialist Eric Amunga says there is no risk once one is dead, but points finger at witchcraft. “There is a time someone approached me with Sh100,000 and all they wanted was a piece of the intestine. This is dried and put in places of business and it is believed to attract customers to the shop but it is nothing other than witchcraft,” Mr Amunga who worked in a mortuary at the early stages of his career said in an interview.

The attendants are also slicing hands, harvesting private parts, kidneys, spleen and the cornea from bodies earmarked for disposal.

Using plasticine, the attendants then can also mold back the individual with the help of a photograph to restore them back to their previous form. In cases of hiving off private parts, coconut husks are sewn back and covered.

“There was one who approached me for male and female genitals. The costs vary depending with the client but they start from Sh5000 and can be as expensive as Sh100,000 if the client is able to pay. The female genital parts are more expensive,” Mr Eric James Ogada, a Forensic technician and a freelance morgue staff trainer says.

We caught up with Ogada at KNH’s farewell home. Ogada, who has run several consultancies for the major doctor training public universities in Kenya says, all morgue attendants are the same. “Most morgues in Kenya are operating with untrained morgue attendants. They do not know how to handle bodies, they lack proper attire.

I have counseled a number who have ended up being infected by deadly diseases,” Ogada says.

Some customers come from as far as Tanzania for the organs.

Lobbying legislators

Mr Ezra Olack, the National Chairman of Funeral Services Association of Kenya (FUSAK) decried the growing cases of organ harvesting without the consent of relatives.

“As an association, we have issues of unclaimed bodies, missing of bodies in the morgue, mishandling of the bodies, issuing fake permit for burials, exhumation of buried bodies, removal of body parts among others,” Olack, who also works at the Lee Funeral home said.

His association is lobbying legislators to come up with a regulator of the sector to reign in on the trade.  The funeral board according to FUSAK will train, inspect, register, license and regulate the funeral industry.