Body donation

Our capacity for accepting body donors for research and teaching purposes is currently exhausted. We very much regret that we will not be able to accept body donors in the period from 18th of December 2024 to 22nd of January 2025.

However, we would like to express our gratitude to the body donors for this gesture and therefore offer the following option to their relatives - despite the rejection of the body donation:

Burial of the urn by the commemorative grave belonging to the University of Zurich (if the deceased has specified this on their donation form) with the costs of cremation and burial covered by us. Unfortunately, transport costs cannot be covered.

Thank you for your understanding.

Anatomical dissection and surgical courses on preserved bodies are an essential part of the training of medical students and future specialists. Future doctors can only become sufficiently familiar with the complex three-dimensional structure of the human body if they visualise structures themselves and study them on prepared specimens.

Prospective surgical specialists must be able to learn and practice surgical techniques that they will later use on patients in anatomical surgical courses. New surgical procedures must be developed and tested on cadavers before they can be used on patients. Medical teaching and research are therefore urgently dependent on the body donation of our fellow citizens.

Body donation is an act of solidarity and the gift of a human being to his or her fellow human beings, especially to the next generation.

You can order a brochure with more detailed information on the meaning, conditions, procedure and consequences of body donation at the address opposite or download it as a PDF file.