Unclaimed bodies left in the Queen Elizabeth Hospital’s (QEH) morgue are now to be cremated a few weeks after death.
Saying that the country’s main medical facility has borne tremendous costs over the years due to unclaimed corpses being left for months in its morgue and in the freezers of private funeral homes, Minister of Health and Wellness Senator the Most Honourable Dr. Jerome Walcott outlined that new arrangements have been put in place to reduce this pressure.
“The bottom line is that the process going forward if these are unclaimed, they will be cremated. If relatives come forward, they will pay the costs of the cremation and the QEH will no longer incur the bills of hundreds of thousands of dollars per year where you’re paying one funeral home $35 per day for refrigeration and another one for removal of the body at $96 per round trip, if it is between 8 a.m. and 4 p.m. And if it is between 4 p.m. and 8 p.m., $45 per day for refrigeration and after night $140 to transport it and then to refrigerate it. These are the costs that we are paying because of unclaimed bodies,” he explained from the Well of Parliament during the Estimates debate on Wednesday.
He pointed out that while the Welfare Department will continue to bear the responsibility for the collection of the unclaimed corpses, these will be claimed from the public morgue seven business days after death and taken to a funeral home for storage.
“If the Welfare Department fails to collect the body within seven working days, the Queen Elizabeth Hospital shall simultaneously notify the said department of its intent to dispose of the body and issue public notification of its intent to dispose of the body. If in two weeks following the public notice the Welfare Department’s assessment concludes that the next of kin or proxy cannot be found or cannot afford burial, the QEH shall be so informed and a recommendation be made for the disposal of the body via cremation arrangements,” he said.
He was responding to questions posed by long-standing Member of Parliament for St. Thomas Cynthia Forde on the plans for the disposal of these bodies as she stated that some families are finding it difficult to pay for burials and are therefore depending on the taxpayers’ to do so.
“I know that it is costly for persons to bury the dead, especially during COVID time. The rich, the poor, the young, the old, we’ve had deaths across the country well over 500, and a lot of the families just cannot bury the dead, poor people in particular.”
(SBP)
