Who Runs Our Mortuaries? The Living Dead?

Some shocking details came to light at a KL Sessions Court, hearing the Michael Soosai faked death caper yesterday, about the way things are done at the KLH death registration section. According to Kuala Lumpur Hospital forensics department medical assistant Azhar Junus, not only are corrections made in the death registration book and burial permit not considered forgery or falsifying documents, he added that it was a normal procedure to amend "unknown" on these documents to the real name of a deceased once he or she was identified by family members.

In fact, he agreed with counsel in court, that there were many such cancellations in the death registration book! "In some of the pages, an entire section was erased using Liquid Paper and corrections were written on it," he said, adding that he had even done it himself. "All changes in the KLH death registration book are made in good faith and are not considered forgery," he said.

Azhar also stunned the court when he said he did not check the body to see if the details of the deceased on the identification card were correct. He said the body arrived at the mortuary wrapped in white cloth and he did not unwrap the cloth to see the body. When asked: "So if the body was Malay, Chinese or Indian, you would not have known?" to which Azhar said yes.

"And if the body was that of Michael Soosai, you would also not have known. Agree?" the counsel asked. Azhar replied in the positive and said it was the responsibility of the police to ensure the details on the identification card of a deceased were correct.

***** What has one of the world's 'best' Health Ministries got to say about this sad state of affairs? With so much of hoo haa recently about one Anthony Rayappan's body, we can be forgiven for thinking that our premier hospital has in place an excellent system to register deaths. Alas now we know that you can get some dead body into the morgue covered in white cloth and register anyone, even one's mother-in-law as the deceased and perpetrate any faked death fraud. I wonder if there have been others who have taken advantage of the lack of proper supervision and discipline and engaged in any insurance scams.

With so much of unsupervised areas in its backyard, and you can bet there are dozens of other similar shortcomings throughout the Health Ministry network in Malaysia, the bureaucrats in the ministry now are too busy poking their noses into the business of private hospitals! The private sector and its success is determined by market forces. Why don't the health department lunkheads concentrate on improving the public services?
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