Cadaveric container freezer to store, manage corpses in HSA

By Ernalisa Othman

JOHOR BAHRU – The rise of Covid-19 infections has given a direct impact to the public health system and patients management nationwide.

The transformation of normal wards into Covid-19 wards due to the increment of Covid-19 patients has also given a huge impact to the management of corpses, especially in the government hospitals.

The situation is made worse with the rise of brought in dead patients who were tested positive for Covid-19 after the PCR test.

The corpse management is also facing challenges with the deaths of foreigners that require various procedures such as documentation from the embassies, repatriation management and the involvement of family members from their country of origin.

They also face difficulty in criminal cases where the bodies were brought to the mortuary without any personal identification, a term named as ‘Unknown’ will be labelled and no one will go to the hospital to claim those bodies.

Such scenarios surely affected the storage space for dead bodies in the government hospitals.

The Medical Forensics Specialist and Head of Medical Forensics Department of the Sultanah Aminah Hospital in Johor Bharu (HSAJB), Dr Mohamad Aznool Haidy Ahsorori said, the latest development demanded the hospital to provide additional storage spaces, such as special containers to store the bodies of the patients.

At HSAJB, he said, special cadaveric container freezers are used in support to the existing corpse storage that has almost reached its full capacity.

The increment of corpse management due to Covid-19 infections and also common deaths have depleted the existing corpse storage space at the mortuary.

A rearrangement of corpse storage has to be done. They have extended the storage space to outside the mortuary building in the form of cadaveric container freezers.

This measure is vital to avoid the corpses from decomposing so that the bodies can be handed in a near perfect condition for visual recognition.

“This is very important if there is a request for further examination on the body of the victim by medical officers for court requirement by the police,” he said.

The low temperature containers placed at the parking space of the Medical Forensics Department of HSAJB can store 20 corpses at one time on top of the 17 existing storage in the mortuary building.

According to Dr Mohamad Aznool, the Brought In Dead cases are usually brought into the hospital by the police or family members and they have been verified dead by the healthcare workers.

Those cases would be screened for Covid-19 through PCR test prior to further examination on their deaths.

Therefore, such cases management would also contribute to the increment of dead bodies before they can be handed back to the claimants or relevant authorities such as foreign embassies.

“Alhamdulillah we would like to thank the Director of Medical Development Division from the Ministry of Health for being very concerned in helping us to overcome the corpses management.

“This effort received the full support from the Head of National Medical Forensics Services, Dato’ Zahari Mohd Noor and specialists. The same goes with the strong support from the Johor State Health Department and the management of HSAJB,” he said. -MalaysiaGazette

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