Press Releases

Ad hoc committee to review public mortuary services

The Secretary for Health, Welfare and Food, Dr York Chow, today (July 7) set up an inter-departmental coordinating committee to look into public mortuary, cremation and other related services to ensure the provision of smooth and quality services.

The committee comprises representatives from relevant departments including the Department of Health, the Food and Environmental Hygiene Department, the Architectural Services Department, the Electrical and Mechanical Services Department and the Planning Department.

The committee, to be chaired by Dr Chow, will hold its first meeting early next week.

"We need to draw lessons from the recent public mortuary incident. The important thing we should do now is to devise both short-term and long-term measures to address the public concerns," said Dr Chow.

Members will examine existing procedures as well as operational manuals in detail for proper handling of bodies in public mortuaries and other facilities.

They will review the capacity and contingency arrangements as well as map out an operation plan to maximise the use of existing facilities.

The committee will also examine the adequacy of the provision of future public mortuary, cremation and other related facilities.

The problem of storage in public mortuaries has been temporarily resolved by moving 50 bodies from the Kowloon Public Mortuary to the new Kwai Chung Public Mortuary. The new mortuary should become fully operational in September 2005.




Ends/Thursday, July 7, 2005
Issued at HKT 17:32

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