WINDHOEK SELMA IKELA
The family of Titus Mweshininga Iita, one of the so-called struggle kids who died last week, claim that the police mortuary is refusing to conduct a post-mortem to determine the cause of death.
They say the police have refused to give them the information needed to get a death certificate issued, and this is delaying the funeral arrangements. They planned to bury him on Saturday.
Namibian Sun talked to the family when they visited the NamRights office yesterday.
Iita, 31, died in the Katutura State Hospital on Saturday. Fellow protesters claimed that he was assaulted by the police in March when they were evicted from municipal and private land along Hans-Dietrich Genscher Street in Katutura. The group claimed that Iita sustained internal injuries and was only admitted to hospital in early May.
The family told Namibian Sun that Iita was an orphan and lived with relatives in the north.
His uncle, Junias Amukwa Shivute, said when they went to the hospital on Monday to get his medical records in order to be issued with a death certificate, they were told that a post-mortem had to be conducted at the police mortuary and they would be informed when that was done.
Shivute said they were called to the police mortuary on Tuesday, where Chief Inspector Jooste Mbandeka told them that Iita had died from drug-resistant tuberculosis and a post-mortem would not be done.
Shivute said they were aware that Iita had been a TB patient from around 2007.
Shivute went back to the mortuary yesterday to speak to the pathologist, who was not there.
Shivute said when Iita, who was deaf, was admitted to hospital the nurses could not communicate with him but put him in a TB ward because his health passport indicated that he had the disease.
When his sister visited him he told her that he was assaulted by the police and complained of abdominal pain and only from there he was taken for X-rays. After the X-rays he passed away, said the uncle.
Shivute alleged that Chief Inspector Mbandeka said that the family could not see Iita's X-rays.
Another uncle, Gabriel Iita, questioned why the doctors could not do an autopsy as requested by the family.
Chief Inspector Mbandeka said he could not comment because Iita's body is not at the police mortuary - it is at the State Mortuary falling under the Ministry of Health.
Mbandeka said he referred the family to the medical superintendent at the Katutura State Hospital.
A certain Mr Dausab at the State Mortuary told Namibian Sun that they are waiting for a doctor's certificate from the hospital stating whether Iita's death was natural or unnatural. Only then can a decision be made whether to do an autopsy or not.
The medical superintendent at the Katutura hospital could not be reached for comment by the time of going to press.