A 27-year-old Bolivian man was arrested after he was caught having sex with the body of a woman who had just died from lung disease.

According to local media reports, nursing assistant Grover Macuchapi was arrested at the Hospital de Clinicas in La Paz, after the woman's 28-year-old husband walked in on the disturbing scene in the morgue.

He had left momentarily around midnight on Monday (Oct 16) to settle the bills and paperwork, reported Bolivian newspaper El Deber.

He returned to find Mr Macuchapi standing over the body with his pants dropped to his ankles.

Mr Macuchapi is yet to be formally charged, as there is no criminal penalty for necrophilia - the act of having sex with a dead body - in Bolivia.

Police are still reportedly seeking to determine the most serious crime he can be charged for, so as to impose the harshest punishment.

Possible charges include profaning a corpse and obscene acts.

The identities of the couple have been withheld. The woman was said to have died from complications linked to a lung disease.

Bolivian police chief Douglas Uzquiano said in a statement that at the time of the incident, the woman had just been transferred to the morgue when the husband caught the nurse in the act.

"The nursing assistant was committing necrophilia... so he (the husband) beat him until the uniformed security arrived."

Mr Macuchapi, who had been working at the hospital for only six months, said he could not fully recall nor understand what happened.

He told local media that something "happened in my head", and described it as being "like in a trance".

"The next thing I remember was feeling a blow from behind when the woman's husband hit me."