A 6-member team of Chinese forensic pathologists brought grateful relief during the year, to a rare situation the Ministry of Health was forced to wrestle with, when the Moto’otua Mortuary ran out of storage space.
Bodies awaiting court ordered autopsies to determine the cause of death were shifted away for storage inside large freezer containers for shipping cargoes when the mortuary could take no more.
The mortuary can only store up to a maximum of 18 bodies to await autopsy.
The unfortunate stockpile of bodies was the direct result of not having a forensic pathologist in Samoa.
Urgent attempts to solve the problem by bringing in a New Zealand forensic pathologist failed.
Health restrictions to protect against the COVID pandemic reportedly discouraged medical officials from both New Zealand and Australia if it meant getting locked up in quarantine for several weeks.
The team of Chinese doctors responded to the appeal from Samoa and by April they were in quarantine after flying in on a chartered flight from China.
The Ministry of Police loudly echoed the Ministry of Health relief when the pathologists finally went to work.
Deputy Police Commissioner, Papali’i Ms. Monalisa Keti, confirmed at the time that 13 of the deceased couldn’t be released under court order until the cause of death was determined by autopsy.
“We are very very grateful that we can now proceed with our police investigations and start getting to the bottom of things,” Deputy Commissioner Papali’i sighed in relief at the time.
The lengthy hold up became an emotional burden on the families of the victims pleading for the bodies of their loved ones to be released for burial.
The families appeal weighed heavily on the police as well.
The Chinese pathologists extended their Samaritan work by helping police with their investigations of an unresolved hit and run road death at Vaitele.
The Director General of Health Leausa after an evaluation of the body pile up, felt that the problem could be easily avoided in the future by amending the law that specifically named a forensic pathologist to undertake the autopsy.
Leausa would like the law changed to include general pathologists who could have easily handled some of the cases that would free up the mortuary.
He underlined how not many people are into this special area of medicine by pointing to New Zealand where there were only eight at the time.
The Chinese forensic pathologists joined a continuing flow of medical personnel support throughout the year from China to the Ministry of Health call for assistance.
The most recent just before the year ended were free medical clinics in selected health districts around the country.