THE EDITOR, Sir:
KINDLY ALLOW me space to respond to an editorial in your publication of Saturday, August 14, 2004 titled 'Respect for dead'.
International standards dictate that a body should be removed from the place of death within the shortest possible time.
The Ministry of National Security which has the responsibility through the J.C.F. (Department of Pathology and Forensic Medicine) should put the necessary system in place in order to have the dead treated with dignity and respect.
The proper procedure to be followed in the case of a sudden death is as follows:
1. The police should be notified immediately if it appears that someone has died.
2. A medical practitioner or a trained person in the medical field should be called by the police or the family to visit the location to pronounce death. If this is not possible the body should be taken to the nearest public hospital or clinic for death to be pronounced.
THE SCENE
3. The police should visit the scene where the death occurred (if it appears that the person has died as a result of a criminal act) to take statements. This may need the services of a video technician, photographer or fingerprint expert who is attached to the Crime Scene Unit. In cases of sudden death where the deceased was last attended by a doctor up to six weeks and the family can assure the police that a medical certificate can be obtained the body should be removed to the funeral home of the family's choice.
4. Upon completion of investigation etc., the police should order the body moved to the public morgue. The body should be properly tagged with a non-disposable tag, displaying the name of the deceased, conspicuously, assigned a case number, placed in a disposable body bag in order to preserve any evidence and removed to the morgue for refrigeration at the optimum temperature. In the absence of a public morgue, the police should be allowed to call a reputable funeral home with the necessary facility to remove and store the body in the shortest possible time for a post-mortem examination to be held.
5. The police should complete the necessary investigations in the shortest possible time in order that the post-mortem can be done within two weeks of death. After two weeks, valuable, credible and admissible evidence may be lost.
ON SPOT POST-MORTEMS
The practice where post-mortems are done on the spot should be discontinued forthwith as there are funeral homes with the necessary facility to remove and store decomposed bodies, including post-mortem facility.
Where a body remains unidentified for a reasonable period of time the law should be amended to allow for a post-mortem and the body to be embalmed if the need arises. The body should not be allowed to decompose in storage. Refrigeration will only slow down the rate at which decomposition occurs.
Anything less than this is unacceptable. The police High Command needs to pay visits to private funeral homes to look at their facilities in order to reduce the trauma suffered by the family, e.g. the young man who died recently in a rural parish and his body covered with a sheet of zinc which heated up and caused the body to strip (a sign of decomposition).
I am, etc.,
JOSEPH M. CORNWALL(Snr) J.P
Tranquilityfh@yahoo.com
Funeral Home Manager
