LIBERIA: Bribes are Paid for Fake Death Records by some Ebola-Stricken African Families

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.

An Ebola burial team carried the body of a woman from a 
home in New Kru Town, a suburb of Liberia’s capital 
Monrovia, on Friday Getty Images

Liberian funerals typically include washing the body and keeping it for a wake that can last days as relatives and friends come by and kiss the corpse before it is buried, often in a family cemetery nearby. In addition, Ebola infection carries a stigma in the country and people sometimes don’t want to admit a family member died of the disease.

Andrew Medina-Marino, an epidemiologist at South Africa’s University of Pretoria who was recently in Liberia helping with the Ebola response, said he had received reports of people paying bribes to Ebola-response teams so they would look the other way while they washed and buried the bodies. Those bribes contributed to the challenges of containing the epidemic that has killed more than 4,000 people.

Health and aid workers say they have for months been hearing reports of secret burials from area residents, and new gravesites appear in cemeteries around the capital overnight.

“Low-level corruption has a high-level impact,” Mr. Medina-Marino said.

In Caldwell township outside the capital, Commissioner Hawa Johnson said she had stopped issuing burial permits to anyone who didn’t have a death certificate from a hospital confirming a non-Ebola death after one of her workers discovered that body-retrieval teams had offered to sell fake death certificates in the community. Similarly, funeral-home directors have said they are double-checking death certificates with the doctor that signed them. But many families just use private plots.

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