Mass burial in Ghana: Public health necessity, forensic gaps, the quest for justice

Introduction

ACCORDING to published public notices, hundreds of bodies were mass buried in 2025 following exercises undertaken by three hospitals in the Greater Accra Region alone, highlighting mass burial as a growing public health and medico-legal concern in Ghana. These exercises, often justified as routine measures to decongest mortuaries and prevent environmental and health risks, have nonetheless generated public unease, ethical concerns, and persistent forensic questions regarding identity, dignity, and justice.

Families, civil society, and forensic experts continue to question whether existing legal and investigative frameworks adequately safeguard the rights of the dead and the living. Beyond Greater Accra, if mass burial statistics from hospitals across all regions were aggregated, the national figures would likely run into thousands of bodies annually, revealing a largely unquantified crisis.

In some cases, individuals involved in road traffic accidents while travelling between regions may lose their lives far from their final destinations, with no effective system to trace, identify, or notify their families. Relatives may assume such persons have migrated to larger cities in search of work, unaware that they may have died anonymously, remained unclaimed in distant mortuaries, and ultimately been included in mass burial exercises.

This reality underscores the grave consequences of Ghana’s limited forensic identification capacity and the absence of a robust medico-legal investigative framework prior to mass burial, exposing a critical tension between public health necessity and the right to identity and dignity in death.

Definition of key terms

To appreciate the complexity of mass burial, it is important to distinguish among commonly misused terms, as each carries distinct legal, forensic, ethical, and social implications that directly influence how deaths are investigated, documented, and ultimately managed within the medico-legal system.

• Unclaimed bodies: refer to deceased persons whose identities are known, but whose families or next of kin fail to claim them within a stipulated period, often due to financial hardship, social stigma, or family disintegration.
• Unidentified bodies: are those whose identities are unknown at the time of death, despite reasonable efforts at identification.
• Unknown bodies: typically refer to deceased persons for whom no biographical or identifying information is available and no investigative leads exist.
• Mass burial: is the collective interment of multiple bodies in a single burial exercise, usually conducted by state authorities, often without individual grave markers, and primarily justified on public health and administrative grounds.

Each category carries distinct forensic, legal, and ethical implications, yet current practice often treats them uniformly.

Laws regulating mass burial in Ghana

In Ghana, mass burials are governed by the intersection of the Public Health Act, 2012 (Act 851) and the Local Governance Act, 2016 (Act 936). The Local Governance Act does not explicitly use the term “mass burial.” Instead, it provides the legal framework and authority for Metropolitan, Municipal, and District Assemblies (MMDAs) to conduct these exercises through sections that mandate environmental health and the management of cemeteries in Sections 12, 14, 35, and 181.

Under Act 851, Section 10 (Removal and Detention of Infected Persons or Disposal of Corpses) health authorities may order the disposal of a corpse—particularly where decomposition or a communicable disease presents a threat—provided strict infection and environmental protocols are observed. Act 936 assigns MMDAs responsibility for public cemeteries, environmental health, and burial grounds, making them the primary executing authorities.

Standard procedures require the issuance of public notices—often 21 to 90 days—urging families to identify and claim bodies. A court order is usually obtained to legitimise the burial, and Environmental Health Officers supervise the exercise. The Mortuaries and Funeral Facilities Agency (MoFFA) regulates mortuaries and practitioners to ensure compliance with public health standards. Obstruction of lawful disposal attracts penalties under Act 851, Section 50 (Hindering Disposal of a Dead Body) and the Criminal Offences Act.

Current practice and institutional publications

In 2025, multiple tertiary institutions publicly announced large-scale interments: the Greater Accra Regional (Ridge) Hospital published a list of 70 unclaimed bodies slated for burial, the Police Hospital signalled plans to inter several hundred unclaimed corpses, and Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital reported mortuary congestion that prompted plans for a mass burial of over 300 unclaimed bodies.

These reports highlight mass burial as a pragmatic response to chronic mortuary congestion, rising storage costs, and limited infrastructure. They emphasise compliance with existing laws but also reveal a troubling pattern: the majority of bodies buried en masse are unclaimed rather than unidentified or unknown. This underscores a socio-economic dimension often overlooked in public discourse.

Forensic methodologies and international standards

International best practices demand that unidentified and unknown bodies undergo exhaustive forensic identification before burial. This includes fingerprinting, DNA sampling, forensic odontology, anthropological profiling, photography, and proper documentation in searchable databases. In many jurisdictions, mass burial of unidentified bodies is considered a last resort and only permissible after comprehensive forensic efforts.

In Ghana, however, there is no clear, nationally standardised forensic methodology mandated for unidentified or unknown bodies prior to mass burial. The absence of a National Forensic Authority, a centralised identification database, and an updated Coroner’s Act means that opportunities for scientific identification are frequently lost—sometimes permanently. This gap contradicts international human rights principles that recognise the right to identity, even in death.

Conclusion

Evidence suggests that most unclaimed bodies in Ghana are not abandoned out of neglect but due to the prohibitive cost of mortuary storage, funeral rites, and burial. While mass burial may address immediate public health needs, it exposes deep systemic weaknesses in Ghana’s medico-legal death investigation framework.

There is an urgent need to review and reform the Coroner’s Act, 1960 (Act 18), establish a National Forensic Authority, and develop a national biometric database incorporating fingerprints, DNA, odontology, and others. Only then can Ghana balance public health, forensic science, and human dignity—ensuring that even in death, no one is reduced to anonymity by administrative convenience alone.

BY DR LAWRENCE KOFI ACHEAMPONG, PROF. PAUL POKU SAMPENE OSSEI, AND DR OSEI OWUSUAFRIYIE

🔗 Follow Ghanaian Times WhatsApp Channel today. https://whatsapp.com/channel/0029VbAjG7g3gvWajUAEX12Q
🌍 Trusted News. Real Stories. Anytime, Anywhere.
✅ Join our WhatsApp Channel now! https://whatsapp.com/channel/0029VbAjG7g3gvWajUAEX12Q