In Guayquil Families prostate for 70 bodies of deceased disappeared during the pandemic

With DNA tests, 57 bodies have been identified, but it is estimated that more than 130 were lost.

In five months of the coronavirus pandemic, 70 families in Guayaquil have not yet recovered the bodies of their relatives.

Last Thursday they held a sit-in outside the Guayas Government and Héctor Vanegas, lawyer for the relatives, indicated that they will adopt the corresponding measures to demand the return of the corpses.

On June 27, the Constitutional Guarantees judge Carlos Andrade López declared the protection action filed by the Ombudsman’s Office against several public institutions due to the loss of more than 130 deaths from coronavirus during the peak of the pandemic.

Among the actions requested in that ruling were the delivery of the bodies that until that moment were fully recognized, a request for a public apology in the media by the managers of each hospital where the loss of the body was reported. Another was psychological care for the families who suffered and still suffer from this situation.

Freddy Herrera, coordinator of Legal Medicine of the National Service of Legal Medicine and Forensic Sciences and the Criminalistics Laboratory, indicated that 57 bodies were delivered to their relatives with the respective certificates that guarantee their recognition.

The official explained that there were families who, not having resources, availed themselves of the Government’s help to bury their relatives.

He affirmed that they already have more identified bodies and that the delivery will take place in these days. But the bodies of the relatives who have not yet been identified request that the procedures be expedited due to the psychological damage they are going through.

Amanda and her family must wait two more months to find out if the body of her brother, Julio Valle, 70, could finally be recognized by the DNA method among the corpses that still remain in the Criminalistics laboratories.

Although the death occurred in the center of the city, the body was taken to the Guasmo hospital on suspicion of the virus.

Marjorie Raza, lost her 71-year-old father in the Guasmo Sur hospital. She hopes that next week they will give her the body of her father because they would have already identified him.