MONTEGO BAY, St James – Jamaica AIDS Support for Life (JASL) says it intends to investigate allegations that funeral homes are discriminating by charging higher prices to handle HIV/AIDS victims. But morticians deny the charge of prejudice, saying that the extra cost reflects additional material needed to treat the bodies.

“If it is more, it is because we have to use additional materials, such as disposables and disinfectants to treat the body, that is what accrues the extra expense,” Leslie Madden Snr, the director of Maddens Funeral Home in St James, told the Sunday Observer.

“There was a time when it was considered high-risk and we had to pay employees more to handle the bodies, but there is not that amount of fear anymore,” he said. “It’s not a matter of prejudice, any corpse can cost additional.”

The accusation of bias was levelled recently by a family member of one of JASL’s clients who lodged an informal complaint that the funeral home which was storing the body had demanded that they pay extra for burial because the body had HIV.

Subsequently, other families told the Sunday Observer that they faced similar charges from funeral homes.

“We will certainly be investigating this and if it is so, we will certainly meet as a group to advocate against this because we do not support any form of discrimination in life or death, for that matter, and I can think of no clear reason why more should be charged for these bodies,” said Annmarie Dobson, the director of public education for JASL.

But Collin Isaacs, the operator of Sam Isaacs and Sons Funeral Home in Montego Bay, told the Sunday Observer that sometimes customers did not understand.

“I am not in agreement with charging more (for HIV/AIDS corpses) because the treatment is the same, whether AIDS or not,” he said. “Certain factors, not AIDS, may call for extra precautions and this applies to anybody. It all comes down to the condition of the body and extra cost applies straight across the board.”

A representative of a popular funeral home in Montego Bay, who did not wish to be named, said that he charges extra to handle the bodies of people who had died of AIDS. “Yes, we do charge more for HIV bodies, but that is for handling,” he said.

Two funeral directors, who requested anonymity, explained that they charged their customers based on packages that covered the casket, wreath, transportation to the location of the funeral and funeral programmes.

“The price ranges from a low of $58,000 to $180,000,” said one of the directors who insisted that he did not charge extra for HIV/AIDS victims.

The other director, who admitted to charging more, said the price ranged between $45,000 and $350,000 for a body without AIDS and an additional $5,000 to $6,000 for those with the disease.

Asked how they could tell whether a person had died of HIV/AIDS, one undertaker said: “In some cases – not all – you can look at the body and tell that the person is HIV.”

Isaacs, however, said there should be no way of telling if a body was HIV infected.

“All we get is a burial order, which doesn’t always state the cause of death,” he said.

A funeral director in Clarendon said his undertakers are reluctant to handle bodies they suspect are HIV/AIDS cases. When asked whether he charged extra for such cases, he said “we don’t do that, but we cannot keep the body for more than five days”.

He also said he did not support charging extra for HIV bodies. “You cannot overcharge them (the family),” he said. “You have to remember that they spent a lot of money on medication, you have to sympathise with them.”