POST-MORTEM MESS: WRONG BODY CUT, BABY’S FUNERAL STOPPED

MBABANE – A Hlanze family was shocked to find a surgical incision (cut) from the neck to the stomach of a baby they were preparing to bury.

This resulted in the funeral being halted while the family sought answers from the police and the funeral parlour, where the baby’s body was kept. According to the family, they had not authorised anyone to perform an autopsy on the seven-month-old baby. The Hlanze homestead is situated at Etjendlovu, up the Mbulungwane Hill, in the Shiselweni Region.

Transpired

According to the family, it later transpired that the police were given the wrong body to conduct an autopsy or post-mortem on. It turned out that the post-mortem had been requested by another family on their own baby, who had also died. However, sources said there was suspicion that the pathologist was given the wrong body to perform the autopsy on. This incident happened on Friday at around 7pm at Etjendlovu in the Shiselweni Region. In an interview with the child’s grandmother, Sindisiwe Hlanze, she said the child died on Thursday, while being attended to in hospital. She said the baby was taken to the hospital after suffering from diarrhoea.

She said the child’s body was collected by Nhlangano Funeral Parlour from the hospital, where it had been kept. “The funeral parlour collected the baby from us and there were no cuts on the corpse,” she said. Hlanze stated that as a family, they decided to bury the baby the following day, as they had a bad history of relatives dying one after another, hence such brought back memories and also to avoid costs.  She said the funeral parlour brought the body of the baby and when preparations to bury it were made, including confirming the body by the family and placing clothes in the coffin, it was discovered that the body had an incision (surgical cut) from the neck through to the stomach area.

Hlanze said in the spare of the moment, they even thought it was not their baby but the parents confirmed that it was the right body.  “I then told the child’s parents that we needed to fix the problem at hand before burying the child,” said Hlanze. She said she then took the initiative to enquire from the funeral parlour about what could have happened to the baby’s body.
According to Hlanze, the response she got from a gentleman who attended the call was that they did not conduct any autopsy on the body. She said the man also asked if the family had confirmed the body before collecting it and they responded positively. However, Hlanze said the challenge was that an autopsy had been performed on the body, hence they wanted clarity.
She said the employee said the funeral parlour did not conduct post-mortems without confirmation from families.

Hlanze stated that the mortuary employee then told them he would enquire what might have transpired in this case and would call them back. “After an hour of not reverting to us and in fear that it was getting dark, hence the people who were assigned to bury the body would fear to go to the gravesite, we called the funeral parlour once again.” She said the employee then advised them that the directors of the company would call them. However, she said before hanging up, she asked the attendant whether the mortuary had a baby’s body, which had been lined up for an autopsy and mistakenly theirs was taken and he said there was none. She said when the funeral parlour director called, she also asked the same question and the director said there was no mistake.  According to Hlanze, she told the director that she would report the matter to the police and she did.

Remains

“The police came to attend to us and checked on the baby’s body and also took pictures,” she said. She stated that the police told them they were opening an enquiry file to get to the bottom of the matter. Hlanze stated that the police then took the body to the funeral parlour, while investigations were continuing. Meanwhile, she said on Saturday, the director of the funeral parlour called them to give an update that police had reported that they were responsible for the incision as they conducted an autopsy on the wrong body.  This, she said, surprised her because the police had denied knowledge of such and the funeral parlour also stated that there was no request for an autopsy on their records.

“I told them that I will not take anything they say but will wait for the police investigations.” After 10 minutes of receiving the call, she said Nhlangano police called her, stating that they had taken the body mistakenly, as they were supposed to take another baby’s body for the post-mortem. Hlanze said the police also stated that the relative, who was leading them when they collected the body for the post-mortem, was not familiar with the baby. She stated that she told the police that they required proof from the mortuary documents of the statements they were alleging regarding the post-mortem and that they also needed to see the other baby’s family. Hlanze said they did not want to believe the information they were receiving was true, especially, because bodies in the mortuary had tags, hence there was no way the family could take the wrong baby as they first needed to confirm the tag and body.

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