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Donald Kaye, 1 November, Clinical Infectious Diseases, Volume 39, Issue 9, 1 November 2004, Pages iii–iv, https://doi.org/10.1086/512340
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Dead Bodies Pose No Risk of Epidemics—W.H.O.
24 September (Reuters Health)—Dead bodies do not spread disease after disasters, such as the killer floods in Haiti, the United Nations' health agency said.
Citing mass graves being dug on the Caribbean island, where over 1000 people were killed by tropical storm Jeanne, the World Health Organization (WHO) said it was a misconception that cadavers cause epidemics.
“It is a myth that regularly surfaces after disasters … that dead bodies pose a danger to the surviving population,” said Johanna Larusdottir, WHO senior advisor on health action in crises.
Outbreaks of diseases such as cholera are more likely to be caused by the living, with their sewage and effluence seeping into the drinking water, for example, than by the dead.
“Infectious agents do not survive long in dead bodies,” she told reporters.
Editor's comment. This interested me, because I had accepted the myth as fact without really thinking it through.
