The exercise, which is scheduled for Friday, September 1, this year, is intended to ease the congestion the continuous storage of the bodies are creating at the facility.

The last time the hospital conducted a mass burial was in March 2017, during when 48 unidentified and unclaimed corpses were buried.

A statement issued by the Ghana Armed Forces in Accra yesterday and signed by its Director-General of Public Relations, Lt Col A. Marteye, said the continued storage of the unclaimed bodies had created congestion in the mortuary affecting the day to day running of the facility.

It further advised relatives of yet to be claimed bodies to visit the facility for identification and collection of their dead relatives to avoid being included in the mass burial exercise.

“The relatives of the unclaimed bodies are requested to visit the Department of Anatomical Pathology of the 37 Military Hospital from Thursday, August 3 to Thursday, August 31, 2023 to claim the bodies.

 “ We wish to also call on the general public to assist in identifying the bodies before the due date,” the statement said.

Unclaimed bodies

Unclaimed bodies at morgues come about due to a number of factors.

Some of the factors include people who got involved in crashes and relatives could not trace them, litigation by families and missing persons, including mental health patients who go astray and pass away.