Some Ebola Stricken African Families Pay Bribes for Fake Death Certificates
MONROVIA, Liberia—Some of the teams sent to retrieve bodies of suspected Ebola victims here are collecting cash instead, allegedly accepting bribes to issue death certificates to families saying their loved ones died of other causes and leaving the body, locals and health workers say.
It is a troubling development for an outbreak in which dead bodies are a major source of contagion and one that suggests local corruption could help undermine the international effort to contain the virus.
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Community-outreach worker Vincent Chounse said he has seen the negotiation happen four times in front of him in Bardnersville—another township on the outskirts of Monrovia.
“The family says the person is not an Ebola patient and they pull them away from the other people. Then they say, ‘We can give you a certificate from the Ministry of Health that it wasn’t Ebola,’ ” he says. “Sometimes it is $40. Sometimes it is $50.…Then they offer bags to them and [the family] carry on their own thing.”
MONROVIA, Liberia—Some of the teams sent to retrieve bodies of suspected Ebola victims here are collecting cash instead, allegedly accepting bribes to issue death certificates to families saying their loved ones died of other causes and leaving the body, locals and health workers say.
It is a troubling development for an outbreak in which dead bodies are a major source of contagion and one that suggests local corruption could help undermine the international effort to contain the virus.
....
Community-outreach worker Vincent Chounse said he has seen the negotiation happen four times in front of him in Bardnersville—another township on the outskirts of Monrovia.
“The family says the person is not an Ebola patient and they pull them away from the other people. Then they say, ‘We can give you a certificate from the Ministry of Health that it wasn’t Ebola,’ ” he says. “Sometimes it is $40. Sometimes it is $50.…Then they offer bags to them and [the family] carry on their own thing.”