On November 7th the World Health Organization issued updated guidelines for safe burial of Ebola victims. The new guidelines stress the need for safe burials but also address concerns about respecting the dignity of the victims and their families.
The new protocol emphasized that burials needed to be safe, but also dignified, taking account of religious and cultural sensitivities to build trust in communities where some people have accused burial teams of spreading the disease. Inviting the bereaved to be involved in digging the graves of relatives and offering Muslim families an alternative to ritual washing of the dead, a practice that could involve lethal exposure to the virus, “will make a significant difference in curbing Ebola transmission,” the W.H.O. said.
Read the full story: W.H.O. Issues New Guidelines on Safely Burying Ebola Victims
The challenge for U.S. funeral directors is complying with the WHO regulations while allowing grieving families to practice the burial customs with which they are accustomed.
Among the protocols: The dead should get double-bagged, and buried or cremated as soon as possible after death. Autopsies are to be avoided, and embalming is ruled out. No open caskets or visits for family members of the deceased, even to confirm identification.
Funeral home workers are not to wash the body, a typical and important rite to practitioners of some religious faiths. Nor are they to remove tracheal tubes or catheters, let alone implanted devices such as pacemakers or defibrillators that can explode in a crematory furnace.
The guidelines run counter to mandatory waiting periods between death and cremation — a safeguard on multiple levels, including to make sure that the right person is being cremated. They also conflict with the industry’s safety standards for cremation and practices meant to ensure the dead are treated with dignity.
Read the full story: Ebola guidelines pose challenges for funeral industry.
Issues such as whether or not to remove medical equipment such as pacemakers prior to cremation since these have been known to cause explosions are still being addressed.
