The complex issue of an overcrowded morgue at a St. John’s hospital can be fixed if government policy aligns itself with the rising cost of living, according to some seniors’ advocates.
In March, CBC News reported 28 bodies were being stored in freezer units in an alleyway outside the Health Sciences Centre due to a lack of space left inside in the morgue — which doubles as the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner.
The overflow problem — which has since been disclosed in other jurisdictions, including Ontario — has been exacerbated because some bodies remain unclaimed, often because the next of kin are unable to afford funeral services or because some seniors don’t have the savings available at the end of life to cover cremation or burial.
“At the end of your life when your income is about $1,600, there’s not much you can do to save $4,000 or $6,000 to die in dignity and be buried,” Mohamed Abdallah, executive director of the St. John’s-based community help group Connections for Seniors, told CBC News in a recent interview.
In short, we need some option that will allow these corpses to be efficiently cremated without unnecessary trappings (with permission of the next of kin or if no next of kin can be found after a reasonable amount of time). It doesn’t seem like that should be that all that difficult, but laws surrounding human remains can be weird.