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Experts say mass burials do more harm than good
30 Dec 2003
By Tim Large
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Iranian officials bury earthquake victims in a mass grave.
Photo by RAHEB HOMAVANDI
LONDON (AlertNet) – Irrational fears of epidemics have led to the unnecessary burial of Iranian earthquake victims in mass graves, adding to survivors' trauma and wasting precious resources, health and disaster experts said.
Within hours of Friday’s earthquake that devastated the southern city of Bam, killing up to 50,000 people, Iranian volunteers were racing to dig common graves to head off feared outbreaks of dysentery, diarrhoea, diphtheria and tetanus.
But health workers said it was a myth that dead bodies constituted an acute health risk after earthquakes.
“As far as public health professionals have been able to determine, this concern has never been substantiated,” Steven Rottman, director of the UCLA Center for Public Health and Disasters, told AlertNet.
He said no scientific evidence existed that bodies of disaster victims increased the risk of epidemics, adding that cadavers in fact posed less risk of contagion than living people.
By Tuesday, nearly 30,000 bodies had been buried after the world’s worst earthquake in a decade.
Volunteers wearing masks and protected by inoculations worked feverishly to dig more graves, while bulldozers cut communal trenches for fully clothed bodies sprayed with disinfectant.
ADDING TO THE PAIN
Islamic tradition requires burial within a day after a ritual washing of the corpse. But the scale of the disaster in Bam forced many to do without the correct rites and wiped out whole families, leaving nobody to observe proper practice.
But Ben Wisner, a hazards specialist with the Development Studies Institute at the London School of Economics and the Benfield Grieg Hazard Research Centre at University College London, said a rush to bury the dead would do more harm than good.
“First, resources that should be going into establishment of water supply, sanitation, shelter, warmth and hygienic food for the survivors are being applied to digging mass graves,” he said.
“Secondly, most cultures, and I think this is true of the people in Bam, require personal attention to the deceased loved one – identification and burial with due respect and ritual – for a sense of closure and propriety.
“Mass graves violate these norms and expectations, thus making it harder to grieve and adding to psycho-social trauma.”
In some countries it is difficult for survivors -- especially women -- to prove their ownership of inherited property without proper documentation.
“Indiscriminate burial demoralises the survivors and can lead them to be deprived of transferable pension benefits through failure to provide death certificates for pension holders,” said David Alexander, a specialist in disasters and currently scientific director at the Scuola Superiore di Protezione Civile in Lombardy, Italy.
DISEASES ARE A MYTH
The World Health Organisation has long challenged the often-cited need to conduct quick mass burials after earthquakes to prevent the spread of disease.
“The most pressing issue is preserving the identity of those who have lost their lives,” its U.S. arm, the Pan American Health Organisation, said in a report in October. “Under no circumstances are burials in common graves or cremations justified or warranted.”
Health experts said fears that dead bodies in Bam could contaminate water supplies were also unfounded.
“At least, as southern Iran is a desert area, the trenches will not flood and the bodies will not float out of them before they can be covered with earth, as has happened so often elsewhere,” Alexander said.
He added that spraying was a waste of disinfectant and manpower.
Waterborne diseases such as cholera and dysentery can only be spread if they are already present in the area, although normal diarrhoea from dirty water can be dangerous to children if they are already weak from lack of food.
“Especially in this cold weather presently in Bam, there will likely not be a lot of fly infestation,” Wisner said.
Alexander said the same myths resurfaced in the media and among local people during every disaster, despite international knowledge of the facts.
“Time and time again, eminent and authoritative experts have pointed out that dead bodies do not constitute a health hazard,” he said.
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