KINGSTON, JAMAICA: THE South East Regional Health Authority (SERHA) offers reasons for dead babies pile-up at KPH and VJH.... "The reason for the pile-up is that the incinerator at KPH has not been working for years.

Sunday, November 29, 2015

THE South East Regional Health Authority (SERHA) yesterday said that a pile-up of dead babies at Kingston Public and Victoria Jubilee hospitals was due to delays in the issuing of burial documents triggered by a number of factors.

"The cause for delays varies and includes the absence of parents from scheduled post-mortems, which is required for a burial order to be issued, as well as delays in [the] decision of parents to take custody of the body of still birth babies," SERHA said in a statement. The health authority was responding to media reports that a number of babies bodies were being stored in the morgue for Kingston Public Hospital (KPH) and Victoria Jubilee Hospital (VJH).

A source yesterday told the Jamaica Observer that the bodies of between 80 and 90 babies were being stored at a Kingston funeral home and that plans to have a mass burial of the bodies at May Pen Cemetery yesterday were scrapped when the media started asking about the matter.

"The reason for the pile-up is that the incinerator at KPH has not been working for years. But a mass burial planned for today (yesterday) has been put off," the source said.

When the Sunday Observer called the funeral home to verify the story, an employee who identified himself as a supervisor said he could not discuss the issue on the phone as he could not be sure that he was speaking to a journalist. In response to a suggestion that the Sunday Observer reporter visit the funeral home, he advised the newspaper to call back on another day, as the funeral home, he insisted, was closed. more