By James Shimanyula

NAIROBI 

Kenyan embalmers, morticians, funeral directors and pathologists will meet later this week to discuss the country's increasing number of unregistered practitioners and mull means of obtaining legal protection for the dead.

"For example, when a person dies in hospital, relatives are asked to clear huge bills. Failure to do so [means] the deceased are kept at the hospital until the bill is paid in full," Ezra Olack, chairman of the Funeral Services Association of Kenya (FUSAK), told Anadolu Agency.

"We want to establish a mechanism whereby nobody can hold a dead body for ransom," Olack said.

He suggested that, in such cases, hospitals should release dead bodies and seek payment after burial.

The association is organizing a two-day conference, which will open in capital Nairobi on Friday, in which more than fifty participants will take part, along with observers from neighboring Uganda and Tanzania.

The annual meeting – which was first held in 2012 – will also discuss the need to vaccinate morgue workers, including pathologists, who are frequently in close contact with corpses.

"This close contact puts them at risk of contracting deadly diseases," said Olack, who works at Lee Funeral Home, one of Nairobi's most prestigious morgues.

He noted that, over the past ten years, Kenya had lost dozens of mortuary workers to infectious diseases, stopping short of providing an exact number.

"With the outbreak of Ebola and the massive deaths it has caused within a short time, we want to make it mandatory for our members to be vaccinated against deadly diseases," asserted Olack, the conference organizer.

In recent months, Ebola – a contagious disease for which there is no known treatment or cure – has killed 4,818 people worldwide, mostly in West Africa, according to World Health Organization figures.

Kenya, for its part, has not registered any Ebola infections to date.

-Training-

The annual meeting comes at a time when FUSAK has been alarmed by an increasing number of unregistered practitioners at the nation's morgues.

"The time has come for us to flush out unqualified morgue workers so that [only] qualified workers handle dead bodies," Olack told AA.

"We want to ensure that we no longer have fake morgue workers," he said.

Olack said plans were underway to create an independent school for training morgue workers.

"It is unfortunate that such a school has never been established," he noted. "We must construct it as soon as possible."

Olack said FUSAK planned to raise funds from individuals and international donors for the purpose.

"It [the proposed school] will provide free training for the profession that seems to have been forgotten," he added.

"We strongly believe that if we empower workers in our morgues through free education, [a higher] level of professionalism and innovation will be achieved," Olack asserted.

He added that one of the conference's objectives was to agree on the standards that should govern the funeral industry.

"These standards should be observed at all morgues throughout the country, regardless of the development status of a place – be it urban or in remote rural areas," he said.

Another conference objective, Olack said, was to sensitize the public about what they should expect when they go to a funeral home or a morgue.   

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