Using ambulances to transport corpses can spread infection, doctors warn

Using ambulances intended for living patients to carry corpses for burial could spread disease and trigger outbreaks, public health experts have warned. The risk is especially serious when the deceased person died from an infectious illness.

Bodies can release fluids during handling and transport. Without proper cleaning and infection-control measures, the same ambulance could expose healthcare workers, drivers, patients and other occupants to infectious agents.

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Corpses are carried by hearses and when you now use our ambulance to carry corpses, you are creating a public health threat to the rest of the public.

Akwa Ibom State recently outlawed the practice. Health Commissioner Ekem John said corpses should be transported in hearses and warned that any private, state-owned or mission-operated ambulance caught carrying bodies for burial would be impounded.

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If the ambulance is not always properly sterilised after being used for corpses, it has the opportunity to transport or transmit disease. Some of these diseases that may have resulted in the death of corpses being conveyed in ambulances may be highly infectious, and that could be a source of transmission of infection, and it could lead to an epidemic.

"Corpses are carried by hearses and when you now use our ambulance to carry corpses, you are creating a public health threat to the rest of the public," John said during a monthly media briefing.

Adebayo Onajole, a professor of public health and epidemiologist at Lagos University Teaching Hospital, said ambulances must be sterilized, cleaned and disinfected after transporting any patient. He said deceased bodies can release potentially infectious fluids and recommended separate ambulances and hearses where resources allow. He warned that highly virulent diseases, including Ebola, could cause fatal hospital-acquired infections if transmitted in this way.

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What we advocate is that for every patient, whether living or dead, the ambulance has to be properly sterilised, cleaned out, and disinfected to reduce the possibility of transmitting any infection that may be present.