The Department of Health in KwaZulu-Natal has denied a woman’s claims that she was picked up in Phoenix and taken to a mortuary where she was declared dead.
In an interview with the Phoenix Tabloid, 52-year-old Constantia Junior Govender alleged that she blacked out while walking to a friend’s home.
She said she woke up at the Phoenix mortuary “feeling cold and covered with a sheet from a corpse bed”.
She alleged that she panicked when she saw another body nearby.
She said she did not know how she arrived at the hospital or what happened to her. She only remembered waking up at the morgue.
Govender told the publication that she was assisted by staff from the mortuary who wheeled her out of the cold room and took her to the casualty ward of the Mahatma Ghandi Memorial Hospital.
She was reportedly told that when she had arrived at the same hospital earlier, she had no pulse and was administered oxygen but “flatlined” three times. She was further informed that after 45 minutes, staff called for the mortuary van.
Govender said she was further told that this was not the first time something like this had happened.
Spokesperson for the KZN Department of Health, Ntokozo Maphisa, told IOL that official records revealed that no such body was ever fetched from anywhere in Phoenix in April, or at any other time that month.
“Neither was there a body that went missing after admission at any time from the Phoenix Medico-Legal Mortuary.
“During April 2023, there were a total of eight Indian females that were admitted. Seven of them were identified and released to families. Of the eight bodies, seven were of adults, and one was of an 8-month-old baby.
“The body that has not been identified yet is still at the mortuary, awaiting identification,” Maphisa said.
In July 2018, a Gauteng woman who paramedics had declared dead after a horrific car crash was later found alive in a mortuary fridge. Distress Alert said the woman was certified dead by paramedics at the scene of a multiple vehicle pile-up in Carltonville. Mortuary technicians then found her alive in a morgue fridge several hours later.
In July 2011, a man woke up in a morgue in the Eastern Cape. IOL reported that the 50-year-old man was presumed dead after his family could not wake him up. He was taken to a private mortuary and after waking up, he was treated for dehydration.
In 2005, a teenager woke up in a mortuary and punched a doctor. Romanian Bogdan Georgescu was taken to the morgue at Brasov County Hospital in Brasov after collapsing and showing no signs of life. He was declared dead on arrival and his body was moved to the morgue. The doctor thought he saw the teen, aged 16 at the time, move and bent over to investigate when he was punched.
IOL