cut and post The Age
AIDS bodies abandoned in PNG
January 11, 2005 - 1:49PM
The stigma surrounding HIV/AIDS in Papua New Guinea has left Port Moresby's main morgue clogged with unclaimed bodies and forced it to send out dozens of unclaimed bodies for mass burial in paupers' graves.
Packed in plywood coffins, 84 bodies are being buried this week in unmarked graves at Nine Mile Cemetery on the city's outskirts, among them 16 stillborn babies.
Many of the bodies are those of HIV/AIDS sufferers whose relatives have shunned contact because of the social shame associated with the disease in PNG.
Some are unidentified while others were left unclaimed for up to 18 months because relatives did not know of the death or could not afford the expense of funerals and burial.
The Port Moresby General Hospital morgue is in need of repair and is designed to accommodate only 64 bodies, but has been holding more than 200, some of which had begun decomposing after being stacked in a corner.
St John's Voluntary Service superintendent Fred Bukoya and his team of volunteers have been contracted to box and carry the bodies to the cemetery.
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AdvertisementOnce there, cords are slung beneath the coffins and without ceremony they are lowered into the ground.
Nearby are the graves of a dozen unclaimed children who died with HIV/AIDS and were interred in November, their graves marked only with bougainvilleas donated by the city's international school.
Bukoya said people in PNG, which has the highest reported rate of HIV infection in the Pacific, needed to be educated about HIV/AIDS to remove the stigma.
"It's dealing with the unknown. They are very fearful of it. We have just come out of an age of sorcery and witchcraft. So anything like this can still strike fear in normal Papua New Guineans," he said.
Hospital chairman Brian Bell said families of HIV/AIDS sufferers wanted nothing to do with the victims.
"A lot of people wouldn't even attend a funeral when bodies were being interred. People here still think you can contract HIV/AIDS just sitting on a seat used by somebody else," Bell said.
Another major reason for unclaimed bodies was that many people who died in Port Moresby only had relatives in the bush who had no way of knowing they were dead, Bell said.
Burying someone is also expensive in PNG.
"By the time you've bought a coffin, sealed it and put it on an aircraft and flown it to somewhere out in the bush, it's cost you up to 2,500 kina ($A1,050) and that can take some people a lot of time to get together," he said.
A morgue official said some of the unclaimed bodies had been kept there since July 2003 and had begun decomposing.
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