Storage Facilities for the Dead In Ghana

Abstract

The distinction between a mortuary and a funeral home appears blurred to the average Ghanaian who readily considers any storage facility for human corpses in Ghana as a mortuary. Added to this is the fact that virtually all such storage facilities are to be found in
hospitals in Ghana. Only a few funeral homes are found in this country and even some of these are beginning to take on the role of a mortuary. This paper defines and addresses the differences between the two facilities and also discusses the need to encourage the construction of community/public mortuaries with the view to shifting the responsibility of administering such community mortuaries from the hospitals, in line with best practices elsewhere. This would enable the hospital pathology service to play its traditional role of diagnosis of diseases in living patients, while also ensuring adequate manpower development by other relevant agencies to fulfill the mandate of the Coroner’s Act, 1960 (Act 18).