GWANDA Rural District Council ward 17 councillor Andrew Ndlovu has said the Manama Mission Hospital mortuary is closed due to malfunctioning refrigerators.
The Manama Mission Hospital mortuary — located 85km south of Gwanda — has faced extended closure due to severe damage caused by storms, lack of funding and power supply challenges.
The breakdown forces locals to rely on private funeral parlours or traditional methods of body storage.
The mortuary is equipped with a 12-body refrigeration unit, though its operational status has fluctuated due to challenges including unreliable electricity and storm damage hindered operations.
However, recent solar installations aim to provide continuous power necessary for proper refrigeration.
Ndlovu told Southern Eye that many issues have long contributed to the hospital mortuary remaining shut.
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“The mortuary has been shut for the longest time. Many issues have contributed to the closure including malfunctioning refrigerators meant to house 12 people,” he said.
“The community once tried to intervene and bought trays because the hospital was short of those.”
Ndlovu said what assisted the residents since the mortuary closed was a private morgue that was recently established.
“People have resorted to the private mortuary even though it might have high charges, but it’s better than nothing,” he said.
“The good thing about it is that it keeps the body for free for the first three days and afterwards they are charged for the services.”
One of the teachers from a local school near Manama Mission Hospital mortuary, Mohau Moyo, said they would appreciate it if government chipped in and renovate the mortuary.
“May the government come in and assist local residents because it’s sometimes hard for them to source money to keep bodies in a private mortuary,” she said.
“The mortuary assisted a lot long back because people were not obliged to pay at all.
“Honestly speaking, some residents cannot afford to fork out exorbitant fees for the services.”
Moyo said it would go a long way because sometimes some families have to wait for a certain relative to arrive and that would mean extra charges from the private mortuary which people cannot afford.
“Sometimes some relatives take time to arrive for the burial so it becomes hard because this means the family will have to incur more costs. So yes we would really appreciate it if the government could come through for us.”
In 2022, Manama community in Matabeleland South province called for urgent renovation of the mortuary, which had not been functioning for more than three years then.
The calls came at a time when government had allocated US$28 million towards the renovation of the hospital’s maternity ward which was destroyed by hail storms.
Health ministry provincial officials revealed that the maternity ward had been renovated, but the mortuary was yet to be refurbished.
Villagers said the closure of the mortuary for three years affected them as they had to take their dead relatives’ bodies for storage to Gwanda or to private funeral parlours, which they said were too expensive.