Locals and health workers in Liberia reported that the families of Ebola victims who died due to the disease are offering cash to workers to declare that the person died of another cause. Bribes are reportedly given to urge the teams to leave the body for burial.
The practice is disturbing since the dead bodies could be sources of infection and accelerate the spread of the disease. Prior to the burial, relatives and close friends touch and kiss the body as part of funeral traditions.
"Low-level corruption has a high-level impact," University of Pretoria at South Africa Epidemiologist Andrew Medina-Marino told the Wall Street Journal.
In Caldwell, a town outside the capital, Commissioner Hawa Johnson said Caldwell is not issuing burial permits unless the death certificate shows that the death was not related to Ebola. But the town discovered that some body-retrieval teams were offering illegitimate death certificates to families. As part of the effort to stop this practice, funeral home owners are also verifying the authenticity of the death certificates presented to them.
Vincent Chounse, a community-outreach worker, shared to the Wall Street Journal that has witnessed such negotiations about four times in one of Monrovia's towns, Bardnersville.
Those who couldn't afford paying cash conducted secret burials of the infected bodies instead. The illegal practice not only endangers the health and lives of the people in Liberia, it also hinders the battle against Ebola due to the inaccurate death toll. The World Health Organization (WHO) believes that the numbers reported to it by health workers are undercounted. In September, investigators found a secret grave in a nearby island in Monrovia where the locals are secretly burying the bodies. None of these bodies was tested for Ebola.
The Liberian government has already issued a ruling that anyone who died due to Ebola infection should be cremated. Cremation is done to prevent the further spread of the virus.
