Even without a body, loved ones never forget their dead. Now the International Committee of the Red Cross is trying to ensure that families across Africa always have a body to claim.Through Pretoria University's health sciences faculty and the NGO the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team, the Red Cross is running a two-and-a-half week course to help those working in the justice departments of African countries to identify bodies found in mass graves or left behind after natural disasters.The team is a world leader in forensic investigation and assisted in the establishment of the National Prosecuting Authority's missing persons task team.On Friday, trainees dug up neatly mown lawns outside the university's forensic pathology department to recover mock skeletal remains.Stephen Fonseca, the Red Cross's regional forensic co-ordinator, said: "We want to teach people that before you bury bodies you have to [extract] the maximum amount of information from them."He said better documentation and recording of grave or disaster sites made it easier to identify or recover remains and help families later locate the graves of their relatives.Luis Fondebrinder, the team's director, said that when there were many bodies after a violent incident or accident there might be a rush to give them a dignified burial.There is, however, a growing understanding by African governments and their justice departments that best practices should be applied in natural disaster or war zones, including properly recording information about the dead before burying them.Fonseca said failure to identify a body could result in no death certificate being issued, which would prevent a family claiming the deceased's pension or insurance payout.The course teaches how bodies should be put into body bags in a dignified way and how to avoid common mistakes such as packing body parts from different individuals into the same bag, which hampers identification.Fondebrinder said work with the dead was "about the families"."Thinking you can rely on DNA to identify skeletal remains is incorrect. Sometimes there is no DNA record to match bones to, or an entire family is buried in one place."In developing countries there might be no dental record of the victim. Getting as much information from remains, without relying on DNA, is important."Fonseca said course participants were taught to look at burial sites before they start digging for remains." Families do no t forget their loved ones. They will be knocking on the door asking for help years later," said Fonseca...