Funeral parlor’s dilemma: What to do with 12 unclaimed bodies

THE operator of a funeral parlor in Talisay City is now faced with a problem on what to do with at least 12 unclaimed bodies that have remained with their funeral parlor since last year.

Maricar Galo, officer-in-charge of the St. Francis Funeral Homes Talisay City Branch, said they are now planning to dispose of the bodies that have remained in their custody and which they all named Mr. X.

Galo said the bodies mostly belonged to male victims of numerous shooting incidents in the city.

She said that they share the problem of unclaimed bodies with other funeral parlors in Metro Cebu.

If a body is unclaimed, Galo said, they are unpaid for the services that they render on the corpse while their morgue also starts to become very congested.

“Although in the nature our business, the more the corpses (referred to us) the higher the income, but we also have a lot of Mr. Xs (that have remained unclaimed). And most of them are victims of the series of shooting incidents in Metro Cebu,” Galo said.

“Placing a lot of Mr. X’s inside of our morgue storage facility requires a lot of money and we cannot afford to hold them for a long period of time,” she added.

Galo went to the Talisay Police Station on Friday to request for the issuance of a clearance for them to already dispose of the bodies by donating these to medical schools and universities in Cebu for use in their medical studies.

Now that she already secured a PNP permit, Galo said she will also start to process a separate application that she will soon send to the Department of Health in Central (DOH-7).

As a procedure, Galo said funeral parlors are required to make a report of the unclaimed corpses with the Talisay City Health Office and wait for two to three months for relatives to claim said bodies.

If still unclaimed, they will then be asked to publish an advisory of the unclaimed corpses with a local daily for a period of four to five months.

After publication, funeral parlors will then be asked to secure a permit from the PNP and DOH-7 for the disposal of said corpses through burial or donation to a medical school.

Galo said their funeral parlor would process an average of 115 to 125 dead bodies per day that are mostly referred to them by hospitals in Talisay City.

They also receive bodies of those who died in their residences and vehicular accident victims that are directly sent to them for embalming.

He said that the average number of bodies that they would process per day increased this year.

For the month of July 2018 alone, they processed a total of 170 dead bodies of which 12 belonged to shooting victims.

Galo said that for the months of June and July, they already recorded four Mr. Xs whom he described to be male victims of shooting incidents.

“The trending of Mr. Xs has become higher (this year) because of the shooting incidents,” she said.