Sudan's Ministry of Health issues guidelines on dealing with the bodies of victims of fighting

Smoke rises in the sky over Khartoum as a result of the clashes. AFP

The Sudanese Ministry of Health yesterday called on Sudanese citizens to wear masks and protective clothing while dealing with the bodies of victims of fighting between the army and the Rapid Support Forces.

In a statement, the ministry stressed the need for people who deal directly with bodies in multiple areas, far from health authorities, to wear protective clothing, gloves and masks, while covering shoes with plastic bags.

The ministry demanded that "rotting corpses" be sprayed with pesticides available in the area, numbering the bodies, writing the numbers in a piece of cardboard and placing them near the corpse, and then photographing the corpse even if with a mobile phone camera from several directions.

She stressed the importance of "searching the victim's clothes and seizing all his belongings, and if a card is found in one of his pockets, the name on the card is placed on the paper with the identification number."

The ministry called for not removing the victim's clothes, pointing out that non-rotting bodies are washed with water only, and shrouded, and each body is buried separately with the identification number of the body written in a tombstone, and called on the ministry to collect this data, and hand it over to any office of the Ministry of Health in any region in the country.