Morgue at full capacity in American Samoa
American Samoa's hospital says there's 32 unclaimed bodies at its morgue and it has no room left.
Transcript
American Samoa's hospital says there's 32 unclaimed bodies at its morgue and it has no room left.
LBJ hospital, American Samoa Photo: RNZI
The CEO of the hospital, Taufetee John Faumuina Jr, said some of the dead belong to local families, but didn't say how many.
Our correspondent Monica Miller says she's surprised that local families haven't claimed their loved ones, and says it can be hard to deal with cases where foreigners die while visiting the territory.
She spoke to Alex Perrottet.
MONICA MILLER: What is happening is there is no more room at the morgue and the reason for that is because some of the families have either forgotten or have just ignored that they have family members who are at the morgue. He did not go into detail as to how long ago and in some cases they are fishermen, in some cases they are mainly Asians who do not have family members here. There have been cases where churches would step up and give a burial to a person whose body has been in the hospital morgue for a while purely on humanitarian grounds they would step forward and give this person a burial and also pay for a plot for them to be buried. So the CEO said at the meeting that there are 32 bodies there and he said that he would have to talk to families. And in fact maybe go on air and talk about this issue of if they ave family members at the morgue that they need to come and claim the bodies because they need the space.
AP: The impression or the idea that we have of particularly a Polynesian country like American Samoa is a great respect for the dead and great funeral processions and that sort of thing so what would be the issue with local families claiming there own dead that are there at the moment?
MM: I mean it would very, a surprise to me if there are Samoan families who have not claimed family members whose bodies are kept at the morgue. But as far as people overseas I mean I can say that most of those cases would be people who don't have families here?
AP: And there is no repatriation kind of, I mean what is the historical context there with being able to repatriate people who have deceased from overseas?
MM: It would be basically up to family members now I know that in the case of the member of the circus who at the LBJ hospital last week the shortest man on earth. It was a group of you know the circus master who got the funding to pay for his hospital bill and then the morgue bill and then it was able to take his body. But as far as the government doing this repatriating bodies on their own. I haven't heard any case like that.
