Police detain two mortuary staff over dumped bodies of 21 babies

Mar 31, 2010, 8:20 GMT

Beijing - Police have detained two hospital mortuary workers accused of illegally disposing of the bodies of 21 babies found dumped in a river in eastern China's Shandong province, state media said on Wednesday.

Tags attached to some of the bodies showed that they had come from the Affiliated Hospital of Shandong's Jining Medical University, where mortuary workers Zhu Zhenyu and Wang Zhijun had illegally dumped the bodies to earn extra income, the official Xinhua news agency said.

'Investigations by police and health authorities show that Zhu and Wang had reached verbal agreements privately with relatives of the dead babies to dispose of the bodies,' the agency quoted Jining city government spokesman Gong Zhenhua as saying.

'They subsequently transported the bodies secretly to the Guangfu River,' Gong said.

City officials also sacked two senior managers over the scandal and suspended a vice president of Jining Medical University hospital, he said.

'The incident happened because hospital staff violated regulations and carried out improper treatment of baby bodies,' Gong said.

'It exposes a serious loophole in the hospital's management and indicates a lack of ethics and legal awareness of some hospital staff,' he said.

State media have reported several cases of hospitals dumping medical waste in recent years, including used syringes that were washed and resold, and the burial of radioactive waste on hospital property.

A hospital mortuary in the central province of Hubei last year admitted dumping eight unclaimed bodies that police found at a local construction site.

Reacting to that case last year, Tan Xiaodong, a public health expert at Hubei's Wuhan University, told China Daily that the most likely reason for such dumping was because China lacked any specific regulations on how to dispose of unclaimed bodies.