Hospital proposes mass burial

THE Angau Memorial Hospital in Lae, Morobe, will be forced to hold a mass funeral before Christmas if the 34 bodies kept there are not claimed, according to the hospital management.
In notices pinned on public notice boards around the city on Monday, the management said the morgue “is overcrowded and the cooling system is affected”.
It has given two weeks’ notice to relatives to claim their dead and “bury them honourably”.
The dead include seven babies, three boys and two girls, and two whose gender were not given and listed simply as “unknown”.
One of the girls was named only as “Baby Sera”.
Of the 27 adults, seven were female.
One of the “unknown” dead is the decomposing body of a woman found near the Eriku basketball courts in the middle of this year.
The morgue’s notice does not give the date of death nor does it name her place of origin or last place of residence.
Some of the bodies have been at the morgue all year.
Two of the dead were men involved in the same traffic accident on the Highlands Highway on Jan 28.
Angau’s morgue is believed to have a capacity for 50 and the holding time is about a week.
Bodies, however, can only be held in the morgue for longer if they were required to undergo a post-mortem examination.