A medical specialist in Papua New Guinea says providing bereaved families with clear medical reports plays a crucial role in preventing sorcery-related violence.
A conference last week in the Eastern Highlands' provincial capital Goroka heard that brutality against women accused of sorcery or sanguma is on the rise and spreading to areas where it is not traditionally part of the culture.
The chief surgeon at Kundiawa hospital in Chimbu province, Jan Jaworski, has spent the past three decades attending to the traumatic injuries of people presumed to be responsible for another's illness or death.
He says when he was asked to reveal the HIV-related cause of a patient's death before a crowd of mourners it presented him with an ethical dilemma.
But Dr Jaworski says he did it to save the life of another innocent person.
"An uncle of the deceased young woman, he stood up and said, 'Thanks from revealing cousin's status and I can assure you that my family here present and the extended family at the place will not search for any sanguma' - means person who might do sorcery."
The chief surgeon at Kundiawa hospital, Jan Jaworski.
