The East­ern Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty says it is in the process of in­creas­ing the ca­pac­i­ty at the mor­tu­ary of the San­gre Grande Hos­pi­tal, which can on­ly hold six corpses at this time.

Last week­end, fol­low­ing a fa­tal ac­ci­dent in Guayagua­yare, the body of the vic­tim was tak­en to a pri­vate fu­ner­al home as the hos­pi­tal’s mor­tu­ary was out of space, ac­cord­ing to a po­lice re­port. Yes­ter­day, in re­sponse to ques­tions from Guardian Me­dia, the ER­HA said it will be mov­ing to in­crease the ca­pac­i­ty at the mor­tu­ary with ad­di­tion­al space at the new San­gre Grande Hos­pi­tal cam­pus.

It added that a mor­tu­ary re­frig­er­a­tor has al­so been pur­chased for the ex­ist­ing fa­cil­i­ty, which is sched­uled to be de­liv­ered by the end of this month, Ju­ly 31. The ER­HA ex­plained that the max­i­mum ca­pac­i­ty was reached last week­end due to the num­ber of un­fore­seen deaths with­in the re­gion oc­cur­ring with­in a short space of time.

The ER­HA said there was an arrange­ment with two fu­ner­al homes to pro­vide ser­vices to as­sist with the preser­va­tion of bod­ies when the mor­tu­ary is filled.

—Jan­nelle Bernard