ABU DHABI // Imelda Barroga can finally breath easy knowing she has fulfilled her best friend’s dying wish to be buried at home in the Philippines.
Corazon Ampuan, 52, a former driving instructor in Abu Dhabi, died in January of kidney failure. As Ampuan did not die in the hospital, her case was referred to the police.
“I kept going to the court and then they told me to the police to get a clearance to get her body back to the Philippines.” said Ms Barroga
Finally two months after her friend’s death, Ms Barroga got the clearance letter from the police for the body to be repatriated. She also managed to track down a distant relative who agreed to receive the body in the Philippines.
Jaber Al Lamki, acting director of customer care at Abu Dhabi Health Authority (Haad), said there were two courses of action when a death occurs.
“It is either natural death at the hospital or not,” he said. “In hospitals, the doctor issues a death notification stating the cause of death, the family are notified and procedures will be completed within the hospital for the body to be transferred to the mortuary for burial or repatriation,” he said.
Other deaths are anything that occurs outside a hospital, such as car accidents or suicides. Mr Al Lakmi said: “It is where the police are the first responders, not the mortuary.”
In such cases, the mortuary keeps the body until they receive a notification from the public prosecutor that it is allowed to release it, bury it, or repatriate it.
Mr Al Lamki said there has never been a case of a body that has not been claimed by a family member at Abu Dhabi’s mortuaries. If such an incident occurs “we will do our due diligence. We don’t want to take the risk of taking action and then have someone ask for the body later.”
He said the authority will contact the dead person’s embassy and get the necessary clearances. “We then give it 30 days after we have contacted the embassy and if a family member does not come forward, which is very rare, then the body is buried in our cemeteries.”
salnuwais@thenational.ae
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Read more on our ‘Burial in the UAE’ series:
■ The costs of repatriating bodies from the UAE
■ Many expatriates opt for burial in UAE
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