Shock and anger at number of errors committed in morgues
GRIEVING families have been shown the wrong body in morgues and parents have had their dead babies’ remains disposed of without their knowledge, a health watchdog has said.
Data from the Human Tissue Au- thority shows there were 253 “serious incidents” in hospital morgues in the last three years – 159 where corpses were accidentally damaged or foetuses disposed of against the family’s wishes.
A woman who suffered a miscarriage said she was “shocked, heartbroken, angry and disgusted” at the revelations and called for the Department of Health to be held to account after it promised in 2014 to ban the incineration of “foetal remains”. The Human Tissue Authority is an executive non-departmental public body within the Department of Health that regulates the treatment and usage of corpses and human tissue.
Freedom of Information data showed that between 2016 and 2018, there were 22 cases where the wrong body was seen by grieving relatives, 27 where the wrong body was released to families, 98 of accidental damage to bodies and 17 where foetal remains were either incinerated with NHS waste, returned to families late or lost.
Other serious incidents included a memory stick containing images of two post mortems being left on public transport in Newcastle in 2016 and in the same year John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford, recording a case of “human error resulting in a mix-up of brains”.
In 2017 Royal Bolton Hospital lost an organ from a corpse, Salford’s hospital trust admitted keeping a dead person’s organ against family wishes and Leicester Royal Infirmary recorded multiple “loss of organs”. Lister Hospital, Herts, admitted conducting a post-mortem on the wrong body and last year a Middlesbrough hospital gave a body to the wrong funeral director, while Chester hospital blamed human error for tissue being removed “without consent”.
Nicolette Harrison, a director at the authority, said although upsetting for families, such incidents were rare. The health department did not comment.