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Dead cancer victim’s body goes missing, recovered en route to Bartica
The family of six-year-old Sharezer Mendonca was already mourning her death. Yesterday, they found that her body was missing from the Georgetown Public Hospital mortuary.
Later, the hospital reported that the body was mixed up with that of another dead child and sent to the wrong family. Further, a post mortem examination was conducted against the family’s wishes.
The family, heeding advice from their lawyers, Ganesh Hira and Chandrapratesh Satram, told staff at the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation (GPHC) yesterday, that the post mortem examination on the child’s body should be postponed until Monday, when an independent pathologist from Trinidad would be available to witness the procedure.
Deceased: Sharezer Mendonca
The family’s counsel had received word from the hospital that he would await the visiting pathologist. However, yesterday it was informed by the hospital that the GPHC mortuary’s refrigerating capacity had been compromised, and that the defect was interfering with the hospital’s ability to keep bodies from decomposing.
The family, who decided to move the body to Sandy’s Funeral Home to keep it intact, went to GPHC yesterday, only to be presented with the body of an Indigenous child.
The body before the Mendonca family was that of a Bartica child, and the body of Sharezer Mendonca was on a hearse on its way to Bartica. The hospital managed to contact the driver of the hearse, who drove back to Georgetown with the body.
Upon receiving the body, the family, who hail from Queenstown, Essequibo Coast, found cuts and stitches which indicated that a post mortem examination had already been conducted on the body. It was accidentally switched with another.
The CEO of the hospital said that the post mortem was only conducted after Mendonca’s body was positively identified by two relatives as the child of the Bartica family.
This publication understands that a second post mortem is scheduled to be conducted on Mendonca’s body on Monday at 8:00 hours by Dr. Nehaul Singh, who also conducted the first examination on the body.
The hospital is under scrutiny as a result of three deaths linked to a form of cancer treatment administered to children. The hospital has launched an investigation to determine the exact cause of the deaths.
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