No morgue at Nyala Teaching Hospital, South Darfur

The Nyala Teaching Hospital that regularly receives unidentified victims of violent crimes, does not have any facility for corpses to be kept cool.

An employee of the South Darfur Ministry of Health told journalists in the state capital Nyala that the hospital lacks a mortuary according to medical specifications.

He said that a foreign organisation constructed a morgue, but was expelled before it could provide the required equipment.

“Now we have a mortuary without refrigerators. This prompts relatives of many dead to get burial permits from the state criminal prosecution,” he explained.

“Yet, the decay also leads to difficulty identifying the dead, which is the primary reason for the prolonged stay of unidentified bodies.”

Director-general of the Nyala Teaching Hospital, Ibrahim Ahmed El Taweel, told reporters in Nyala on Saturday that the hospital is about to collapse.

Radio Dabanga published a background article on the worsening situation of the hospital on 8 August. Recently, the South Darfur government reassigned the Specialist Hospital in Nyala from treating civilians to treating paramilitaries of the Rapid Support Forces only.

As the Specialist Hospital is one of the few hospitals in Nyala, the people of the million city and surroundings now have to depend on the Nyala Teaching Hospital – that “does not deserve to be called a hospital” according to one of the doctors.

In late July, the South Darfur Ministry of Finance deducted SDG10 ($2) from the wages of 27,000 state employees, without consulting them, for the maintenance and expansion of the Teaching Hospital. Governor Adam El Faki commented at the time that the hospital has been in need of maintenance and additional equipment “for a long time”.