OSH releases report into state of country's mortuaries

Tuesday 12 May 1998

Only one of New Zealand’s mortuaries is suitably safe to carry out "high-risk" autopsies, an audit by the Occupational Safety and Health Service of the Department of Labour (OSH) into health and safety issues in the country’s mortuaries has found.

The audit arose after OSH received several complaints from pathologists and mortuary technicians through out the country. They were concerned that their working conditions were exposing them to potentially lethal infections

"The facilities only at Christchurch Hospital were deemed suitable to carry out autopsies considered high risk," said OSH spokesperson Lisa-Marie Richan. "This would include autopsies on victims thought to have died from Hepatitis B, Hepatitis C, the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV), Creutzfeldt-Jacob Disease (CJD), and Tuberculosis."

Seven institutions have what OSH has described as suitable basic facilities and workplace procedures to carry out non-high risk autopsies. These were the facilities at New Plymouth, Palmerston North, Invercargill, Middlemore, Rotorua, Wellington and Dunedin hospitals.

The remaining eight facilities were found to not meet these basic standards. These were facilities at the Auckland University, Tauranga, Wanganui, Hastings, Lower Hutt, Timaru, Greymouth and Hamilton hospitals.

"Most of those that did not meet the basic standards require improvements which in themselves are not expensive and should be coupled with work practice changes," said Ms Richan.

"Unable to find specific international standards for mortuaries, OSH used information predominantly from the UK Health Services Advisory Committee to carry out the audit."

"OSH will encourage the owners of the mortuaries, employers of staff and the New Zealand Committee of the Royal College of Pathologists of Australasia to formulate and adopt national standards," Ms Richan said.