Between storage and burial: Mortuary overcrowding in Khartoum

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

Between 2019 and 2023, Sudan was exposed to Forensic and humanitarian challenges, which were the significantly increasing figures of unidentified remains settled in forensic mortuaries in Khartoum. This humanitarian burden gradually inclined, reaching its peak by the end of these years. This narrative review examines the root causes, broad extent, and forensic implications of cadaver overcrowding inside mortuaries in pre-conflict Sudan, drawing on reports from various resources, including media, government, and human rights bodies. This review discusses numerous causative factors, starting with the weak infrastructure of the medicolegal system, absence of framework to follow a broad identification system and political violence which led to the Khartoum massacre, which occurred on the 3rd of June 2019. The results highlight the fact that 3,000 of unidentified cadavers were kept for a prolonged preservation, unexplained extended period under critical environmental conditions, mainly exceeding mortuary capacity, this resulted in late stages of decomposition, commingling, diminishing of preserved evidence including the semi-permanent loss of identity and reduced reliability of forensic human identification methods. Also, considering the raising concerns toward public health risks and floating of epidemiological diseases such as cholera and the plaque.