The most frequent illnesses to which the Sakais are subject are rheumatic complaints and very heavy colds which not rarely turn into severe bronchial and pulmonary ailments. Both are due to the cold at night against which they take no pains at all to protect themselves. Their huts shelter them from the rain but not from the air.
Some contagious skin diseases are also prevalent amongst them.
Directly somebody is seized with this malady a tree is selected at some distance from the settlement up which a little bower is hurriedly made and the person attacked is placed there and left with a little food at hand. Next day the relatives go to see if he or she is living and call out their demands, in a loud voice, a long way off. If there is a movement or an answer they go nearer and throw up some food but if there is no sign of life they hasten back and leave the corpse to decompose in the bower that now serves as a sepulchre.
No rites whatever are performed at the death and burial of an individual.
When the sufferer has breathed its last all the people in the village unite in making grand lamentations. They cry, moan and howl worse than at the proverbial Irish funeral, they blacken their faces with charcoal and daub it with other colours to frighten away the bad spirit whilst the family crowd round the dead body and let their tears flow freely, exclaiming:
"Alas! Look at us, don't leave us! Who will take care of us now! Who will defend us? Thou has departed before us and we shall follow thee".
The first moments of grief over they quickly destroy the hut visited by Death, then taking up the corpse they carry it into a thick part of the forest.
Here a grave is dug, from five to six feet deep and the body is placed in it, sometimes lying on its back, and sometimes in a sitting posture but always with its face turned towards the west. Some tobacco, betel and personal objects of the deceased are put near and then it is covered up with the ground. Sometimes these articles are strewn on the top of the grave and sometimes too instead of interring the corpse it is laid upon pieces of wood placed horizontally across the branches of a large tree, close to the trunk.
But whether buried or not, for seven days the dead person's relatives carry water, fruit, tobacco and sirih to the spot, over or under the last resting-place of their lost one, taking care to always keep a bright fire burning within the vicinity.