The body bag of the future

Time line

The project started with the idea of designing a portable, cheap fridge. With this in mind we looked for use cases for such a technology. As part of this we interviewed members of the Forensic Services group at the ICRC about how our fridge could be used in the preservation of dead bodies.

During large scale disaster situation identifying people by recognising their face is by far the simplest and most efficient method. However the rate of decomposition in hot and humid climates means there is a very short window of between 24-48hrs for this to be possible.

We realised that building a self-cooling body bag would be ideal but impossible given the price constraints. As in practice only the cheapest available body bags are used in the field. Therefore we started considering alternative methods of slowing decomposition. Potentially useful things are: removal of oxygen, desiccation, reducing bacterial load, ...

There has been no innovation in the field of cheap body bags in the last 20 years. Currently used body bags do nothing to prevent decomposition. In addition they are neither leak nor smell proof. However they are cheap and easy to use.

Among the preservation methods we decided on vacuum packing:

• it is low cost
• demonstrated effectiveness with preservation of food
• easy to implement in the field