•17 cleared, 6 claimed
Photo:
Sun News Publishing
Date:
Tue, 06/12/2012 - 23:14 Fresh confusion brewed at the Lekan Ogunsola Mortuary of the Lagos University Teaching Hospital, LASUTH yesterday, as many of the corpses retrieved from the wreckage of the Dana plane crash had decayed beyond recognition. The hospital authorities had released a total of six identifiable bodies so far.
Meanwhile, another seven bodies ready for collection on Sunday were yet to be claimed, as the hospital was waiting for the families to show up while four new bodies were cleared yesterday for collection.
According to LASUTH authorities, the confusion was that victims’ families mistook the serial numbers given on identification of corpses for the tag number for the corpses. Chief Medical Examiner, Consultant Pathologist and Forensic Medicine, Professor John Obafunwa explained to the families that the corpses had no tag numbers.
He lamented that the confusion caused by the victims’ families yesterday slowed down his work because he had to explain several times over to victims’ families what he and his team were doing. “At the end, we could only get four bodies ready for collection today,” he lamented.
Relatives of crash victims who cried foul, blamed government and LASUTH authorities for the new twist, saying the present challenge of decaying bodies could have been avoided if the bodies were released to them on identification last week.
A victim’s relative who spoke with Daily Sun narrated his ordeal: “We have identified our sister’s body the first time, they did not release it to us, came back a second time to identify her, yet could not collect her body. Today, we are asked to identify her again, it is difficult because the bodies they brought were decaying and difficult to recognise,” the angry young man roared.
The angry man who was not in the mood to say his name or his relations name questioned: Why did they not put a tag on her? The two times we identified her, they are playing games with us,” he said. In the confusion, some victims’ relatives questioned the reason for the secrecy in naming the six bodies that had been released so far by LASUTH authorities, insinuating that the action is not in good faith.
Chief Medical Director (CMD) of LASUTH appealed to the victims’ relatives to calm down pledging that things would be sorted out on the long run. Explaining why they would have to wait for four to six weeks before they could get their bodies, the CMD said: “I got a report that some people were presented with bodies that do not belong to them and they said they were theirs. Yesterday, the governor emphasized that he wants you to get bodies that actually belong to you because, burying the wrong body would amount to traumatic and Professor Obafunwa has been working day and night to make sure that this purpose is achieved. “Two days ago, two families were quarrelling over one body, that is the more reason we should be very careful. Think about it, he does not have anything to gain from keeping your bodies.
If he exposes the whole body, most people would look at the body and begin to quote the features they see. What they are trying to do now is to take the dental records to make sure that the bodies you get are yours.
Also defending his stands on why some previously identified bodies could not be released until after DNA test has been concluded, Professor Obafunwa said: “I understand how you feel about the whole process, and I have also heard several rumours that we released some bodies because of their social status, but I am not going to be intimidated by those allegations. I am more concerned of getting things done right so that even if we make a mistake, let it be said that we made a very honest mistake. “The bodies we released are the ones that were properly identified.
There were cases where some families have identified some bodies as theirs, and when asked to describe some of the features of the person, they gave wrong descriptions. There was a case where a man identified a body as his wife, but when asked to provide some evidence, he provided a dental record and at the end of the exercise, the record did not match the body, and several other cases.
“I have nothing to gain here by keeping the bodies, but I want you to understand that whatever we do here have some legal implications and when anything goes wrong, I will be the one to be held responsible. So to really get things right, DNA examination is just the best option. I appeal to you to be more patient if you must get your right corpse,” he said.
SOURCE: 12 June 2012.
No comments:
Post a Comment