Mobile Crematory Operators Aim to Help Bolivia with Increase
Posted: Tue Aug 04, 2020 1:53 am
A state department health worker stands in full protective gear while recovering the body of a street vendor who was found at dawn by his neighbors in the Cerro San Miguel neighborhood of Cochabamba, Bolivia, July 25, 2020.
A group of entrepreneurs believe their mobile crematorium is the solution to Bolivia's surge in coronavirus deaths.
Carlos Ayo, an environmental engineer, who is part of the group said, there are instances when dozens of bodies piled up in the street in Bolivia because families do not have the resources or aren't finding places to bury or cremate the bodies of loved ones and they end up throwing them in the streets to avoid contaminating themselves.
Ayo says the mobile crematory represents a way of giving something back to his homeland.
The group hauls the furnaces to communities that do not have the resources to meet the increasing demands brought on the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Associated Press said, in Cochabamba, Bolivia, one of the hard-hit cities, bodies were placed in the streets because of a break down in funeral services.
So far, more than 3,200 people have died of the coronavirus in Bolivia and more than 81,000 people have been infected with the virus.