Corpses Keep Getting Mixed Up

[bloodrayne]

Morgue Employees Punished Over Mixup of Buried Bodies

JEDDAH — The governorate of Makkah has ordered the transfer of all employees of the morgue at the psychiatric hospital in Jeddah, including the head of the morgue department, for dereliction of duty which resulted in a double mixup of buried bodies. Al-Watan reported that the morgue employees had made mistakes in handing over dead bodies for burial to the families of the deceased.

Jeddah Municipality earlier ordered deduction of five days’ salary from two workers in Hawa graveyard in Jeddah because they dug out the wrong body after burying a Filipino whose own funeral had the wrong body.

The mixup happened because morgue employees had misread the number on the Filipino’s body. Again, when the body was to be exhumed, the wrong grave was dug and the wrong body taken out.

The incident came to light after two Saudis buried what they thought was the body of their brother. They had received a call from the psychiatric hospital to collect the body of their brother who had died in a traffic accident.

They both noticed that there was something amiss when they took the body but were too grief-stricken to dig deep. The body was washed and funeral prayers held before he was buried in Hawa graveyard. But soon they discovered that the body they had buried was of a Filipino and the mixup was caused by the morgue employees who misread the numbers on the body.

The hospital then asked the two brothers to dig out the body and return it to the hospital morgue. The mixup did not stop there. Grave diggers dug out the wrong body from grave No. 33 while the Filipino’s body was in grave No. 34. The hospital had to return the wrong body to the graveyard.

A special committee comprising police, Jeddah Municipality, the intelligence department and the health department, investigated the incident and established that the two brothers had buried the wrong body because they were under severe anguish after hearing the news of the sudden death of their brother in a traffic accident.

A source at the health department in Makkah told Al-Watan that a new department was subsequently formed to look after mortuary affairs in order to streamline the procedure of receiving bodies and handing them over to the family for burial. In the past, every hospital had its own procedure.

The source said that the new procedure would not delay delivery of bodies of normal death cases. The procedure stipulates that the bodies be handed over within a day or two.

The new department will coordinate with police, the health department and hospital in cases where people die under suspicious circumstances. It will also coordinate with the family of the dead and with Muslim residents to check whether they want to burry their relative in Saudi Arabia or to send the body to their home country for burial.