Detaining the Dead… When Humanity Falls into the Abyss of “Health Care”!
At a time when healthcare should be a guaranteed right for every citizen — not a commodity to be bought and sold — the body of a poor woman lies detained in the morgue of the National Hospital in Nouakchott. It has been there for two days, not due to any medical or legal reason, but simply because her family couldn’t afford to pay the full hospital bill.
Her relatives managed to scrape together seventy thousand ouguiyas (old currency), but the hospital administration refused to release the body. They denied her the dignity of burial because they couldn’t pay the full amount of two hundred and fifty thousand ouguiyas — as if the dead don’t deserve peace unless the “final fee” has been paid. What logic is this? What moral collapse?!
Madam Minister of Health, has burying our dead become a financial equation? Have we reached a point where bodies are held hostage in public hospitals? Who decided that poverty is a crime that haunts a person even after death?
And the tragedy doesn’t end there. Just a few days ago, a young man drew his last breath at the gates of another hospital after doctors refused to admit him for treatment. He died at the entrance — just as dignity dies every day in the corridors of institutions devoid of compassion.
What’s happening isn’t a “management issue” or an “administrative error.” It’s a full-blown scandal. And the silence of the Ministry about these crimes is a horrifying act of complicity — especially since such incidents are no longer isolated, but rather a recurring pattern in the way the health system treats the poor.
Where is the slogan “Health for All”? Where is the human right to care, dignity, and a peaceful death? What kind of government fails to protect its citizens in life — and humiliates them in death?
What is taking place today in some hospitals in Mauritania is indefensible and should not be tolerated. These are not mere individual violations, but a dangerous indicator of the collapse of ethical values within an institution that should protect the weak — not humiliate them on their deathbeds.
It is time to hold those responsible accountable and to cleanse the Ministry of Health from chaos, cruelty, and inhumanity. A person’s worth should never be measured by the price of a bill — but by their dignity. And if the state fails to understand this, then it governs numbers, not people
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By : Mohamed Abdrahman Ould Abdallah
Journalist, Nouakchott
