Health department moves to collect, identify bodies

The Department of Health (DOH) has set up a quick system for managing the collection of bodies in the typhoon-ravaged areas of Leyte and Samar provinces.

The DOH has convened a meeting of forensic experts from the World Health Organization (WHO), the National Bureau of Investigation, and the University of the Philippines to establish the system that, it said, conforms with existing international standards on disaster victims identification.

Several teams, each composed of a forensic expert and four others including a photographer, will start work using the quick system on Saturday, the DOH said.

The Philippine Red Cross will support the teams by providing psychosocial support and preparing the communities for the process.

Photos, identifying marks and belongings, and appropriate samples for possible DNA testing will be collected when possible, considering the prevailing harsh conditions, the DOH said.

According to Health Secretary Enrique Ona, the identification process will not allow public viewing but surviving relatives will be asked to participate in the final identification of bodies at an appointed time.

“Hopefully, each team will be able to handle 40 dead bodies every day. Final identification of dead bodies will take a while but we appeal to the public for their patience and understanding,” Ona said in a statement.

After the identification procedure, the bodies will be temporarily buried according to prevailing protocol that will allow future investigations when necessary, he added.

A week after one of the strongest typhoons ever tore through the Philippines, bodies still lie where they fell or were washed up, the defining motif of a tragedy that has killed thousands.

The stench of bloated and discolored human flesh decomposing under the tropical sun hangs everywhere in the city of Tacloban, where wretched survivors and rescue workers cover their mouths to keep the cloying smell from their throats.

Hundreds have been collected, put into body bags and trucked off to wrecked municipal buildings to await burial in mass graves, a process that city authorities began on Thursday.

Officials and aid volunteers say those bodies that have been recovered are just the beginning, a small fraction of those that could be seen when the storm surge subsided. Many more, they say, lie under the mountains of debris.

“Leaving them (the bodies) just decaying on the roadside, uncollected, is next to unforgivable,” said Catholic priest Amadeo Alvero.

Officials initially said picking up the bodies had to take second place to the effort to help those still living, many in utter destitution, their homes swept away and with precious little food or clean drinking water.

But they also conceded they had simply been overwhelmed by the number of dead and had temporarily run out of body bags.

Echoing a fear expressed by many, Alvero said the dead could be the source of contagious disease.

“The government needs to act fast because this could also become a health issue,” he said.

In many affected areas, many bodies have yet to be discovered and retrieved. And almost all the bodies that have been retrieved remain unidentified and unburied.

There is a growing fear among the public that the bodies will cause illness. But Ona explained that dead bodies do not cause epidemics.

“Dead bodies do not pose immediate health risk. Those are cadavers and when you die, you are no longer infected. The bacteria dies with you,” he said.

“Most infectious germs do not survive beyond 48 hours. Body handlers can wear gloves when they handle bodies and must wash their hands as precautionary measure,” he added.

Teams have been dispatched to Tacloban from the justice department’s investigating arm and the national police’s crime laboratory.

They know they will not identify everybody they find straight away, but hope to collect enough evidence to allow that to be done later.

“On the scene, our doctors begin the documentation,” said Chief Supt. Liza Sabong, head of the Philippine National Police crime laboratory and part of the contingent sent to Tacloban.

“We tag them as male or female, they photograph them, list the belongings on the cadaver itself. We do fingerprinting. We measure the body and then they are placed in cadaver bags.”

This “processing” will allow any surviving relatives at a later date to identify the body, possibly through its clothes or appearance, she told Agence France-Presse (AFP).

But the sheer scale of the task is overwhelming.

Only 13 of the 182 bodies collected by Sabong’s group have been picked up by their relatives, she said. The rest have been left behind.

Tacloban on Thursday began mass burials of some of those bodies that had been bagged and laid out by the shattered City Hall.

The plan, said Mayor Alfred Romualdez, was that all those whose name and family were known would be placed into one huge pit. The unidentified rest would go into a separate mass grave.

Romualdez, who has been an outspoken critic of the rescue effort, said he believed three-quarters of all bodies collected had still not been claimed by family. In these circumstances, mass burials were the only option.

“Let’s get the bodies out of the streets,” he said. “They are creating an atmosphere of fear and depression.”

The head of the justice department’s forensics division, Wilfredo Tierra, said the collective burial was only intended as a stopgap measure.

“They will be buried temporarily in a shallow, mass grave and when everything has settled down and the peace and order situation is not an issue anymore, then we will proceed with the proper disaster victim identification,” he told AFP

Saturday 16 November 2013

http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/528123/health-department-moves-to-collect-identify-bodies

Leyte mayors prepare mass graves to protect the living

On Friday, November 15, Melvin Lasi buried his grandfather a day after his body was found under the rubble of his neighbor’s house. It’s been a week since the old man was killed by Super Typhoon Yolanda (Haiyan).

Lasi’s grandfather was one of the 801 people who died based on the latest count of the Tacloban City government. The death toll is expected to rise in the coming days as retrieval operations continue. “The final figure will be significantly higher,” Tacloban City Mayor Alfred Romualdez said in a press briefing on Friday, November 15.

Unlike Lasi’s family, other survivors could not properly mourn and bury their dead. Only about 10-15% of the bodies were identified, Romualdez said.

Starting Wednesday, November 13, many of the dead were laid in a temporary mass grave dug in a public cemetery in Basper, a village in the outskirts of the city.

On Thursday, November 14, at least 105 bodies were put in a long trench dug by a backhoe inside the cemetery. Hundreds of cadavers in black bags rotting in front of the city hall for a week were transported to the mass grave as Romualdez was holding the press conference.

Lack of manpower

Asked what took the government so long to bury the dead, Romualdez said the city lacked manpower. He added that he “constantly requested” help from the national government to retrieve bodies but understood that it could only do so much with what it has.

But according to Interior and Local Government Secretary Mar Roxas, the government has mobilized its assets and is following a protocol for identifying and burying the dead.

The process allows survivors to identify their dead while protecting the health of the public and water sources. “Sinusunod naman iyan lahat,” Roxas said in a press conference late Friday afternoon, November 15. (We follow everything.)

Romualdez earlier gave assurances the Philippine National Police Scene of the Crime Operatives and the National Bureau of Investigation conducted "dead victim processing" in coordination with the Department of Health. This will help provide closure to survivors in the future, if not today, officials explained.

Romualdez said he will wait for the recommendation of the agencies on when the graves can be covered. Bodies can be exhumed and identified in the future.

Protect the living

Mayor Remedios Petilla of the nearby town of Palo could not wait, however. “We don’t care any more. We just told them we’ll bury them, give them a decent burial, blessing from the church and all that," Petilla said.

According to the mayor, she waited for 3 days “but we were not provided with body bags.” As of Thurday, November 14, at least 813 casualties – 30% of which were not identified – were buried in batches of a hundred per mass grave.

“We’re trying to protect the living,” Petilla said, adding that she made the choice to prevent the contamination of water and the spread of disease in her town.

The death toll in the aftermath of Yolanda has reached over 3,600 so far, the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council reported on Friday, November 15.

WHO warns: Avoid mass burials

The World Health Organization (WHO) is discouraging local government officials from holding mass burials for the victims of Super Typhoon Yolanda (Haiyan).

According to the WHO Technical Note for Emergencies, the international health body said it would be best to avoid holding of mass burials for the thousands of victims of the super typhoon.

“Burials in common graves and mass cremations are rarely warranted and should be avoided,” said the WHO in its guidance on the disposal of dead bodies in emergency situations.

The WHO said there is no need to rush burying the dead to the point of bypassing correct identification and time to bereave for the loved ones, as it may just lead to more psychological trauma.

“This does not allow for the correct identification and record taking of the details of the dead. Nor does it give the time for the bereaved to carry out the ceremonial and cultural practices, which would normally occur after a death,” said the WHO.

It also agreed with the earlier position of the Department of Health (DOH) that there is no truth to the belief that corpses pose a risk of communicable disease if they remain sitting in public.

“The widespread belief that corpses pose a risk of communicable disease is wrong. Especially if death resulted from trauma, bodies are quite unlikely to cause outbreaks of diseases such as typhoid fever, cholera, or plague,” said the WHO.

The international health body said that the only health risk that dead bodies hold is if they manage to contaminate streams, wells, or other water sources, as they may result to gastroenteritis or food poisoning syndrome to the survivors.

As much as 10,000 people were believed to have died from the onslaught of Yolanda, although Aquino opined that it may be “too much” of an estimate.

On Friday, the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council (NDRRMC) reported that the death toll from the Super Typhoon Yolanda has risen to 3,621, a jump of more than 1,200 from the previous toll of 2,360.

Tacloban City Mayor Alfred Romualdez said they are already planning to hold mass burials for the victims while admitting that many remain uncollected. In fact, on Thursday, six days after Yolanda hit land, scores of unidentified bodies were interred together in a hillside cemetery without any ritual — the first mass burial in Tacloban.

Still, the WHO urged that the corpses should be collected immediately from the streets in order to minimize the distress caused by the sight of dead bodies and the odor produced by their decomposition.

“It is important to collect and remove corpses to a collection point as quickly as possible,” said the agency.

After collection, the WHO said it would be best if stricken communities are encouraged to carry out traditional ceremonies and grieving processes.

“This is important in helping people deal with the psychological impact of such disasters as it sets in motion the process of disaster recovery,” it said.

It pointed that it would be better if burial of dead bodies are placed in individual graves and that burial procedures should be consistent with the usual practices of the community concerned.

The WHO also said it is not required that the dead bodies will be placed in coffins but should be at least wrapped in plastic sheeting in order to keep the remains separate from the soil.

The area badly hit by the typhoon was Tacloban City, where scores remain missing as of Friday, November 15.

Saturday 16 November 2013

http://www.rappler.com/move-ph/issues/disasters/typhoon-yolanda/43813-mass-graves-leyte-haiyan

http://www.sunstar.com.ph/breaking-news/2013/11/15/who-warns-avoid-mass-burials-313872

Search for missing a hellish routine after typhoon

John Lajara peers under a slab of crumbled concrete, lifts a sodden white teddy bear then drops it back into the filth. He reaches again into the rubble and pulls out a boot, a treasured find in this typhoon-flattened village. But he's searching for something far more precious — the body of his brother, Winston.

For those still looking for loved ones missing since last week's storm, their already torn-apart lives are shot through with a difficult question — How do you move on when there is no body to bury?

The search for the missing — 1,179 by official count — has become a hellish daily activity for some. In Lajara's seaside village, residents estimate that about 50 of the 400 people who lived there were killed. About half of the dead are still missing: mothers, fathers, children and friends.

"Somehow, part of me is gone," Lajara said as another fruitless expedition in the rubble ended Saturday.

Lajara has carried out the routine since both he and his brother were swept from their house by Typhoon Haiyan on Nov. 8. And every day has ended so far with no answers on Winston's fate.

According to the latest figures by the Philippines' main disaster agency, 3,633 people died and 12,487 were injured. Many of the bodies remain tangled in piles of debris, or are lining the road in body bags that seep fetid liquid. Some are believed to have been swept out to sea.

After the initial days of chaos, when no aid reached the more than 600,000 people rendered homeless, an international aid effort was gathering steam.

"We're starting to see the turning of the corner," said John Ging, a top U.N. humanitarian official in New York. He said 107,500 people have received food assistance so far and 11 foreign and 22 domestic medical teams are in operation.

U.S. Navy helicopters flew sorties from the aircraft carrier USS George Washington off the coast, dropping water and food to isolated communities. The U.S. military said it will send about 1,000 more troops along with additional ships and aircraft to join the aid effort.

So far, the U.S. military has moved 174,000 kilograms (190 tons) of supplies and flown nearly 200 sorties.

The focus of the aid effort is on providing life-saving aid for those who survived, while the search for missing people is lower in the government's priorities.

The head of the country's disaster management agency, Eduardo del Rosario, said the coast guard, the navy and civilian volunteers are searching the sea for the dead and the missing.

Still, he said, the most urgent need is "ensuring that nobody starves and that food and water are delivered to them."

Lajara's neighbor, Neil Engracial, cannot find his mother or nephew, but he has found many other bodies. He points at a bloated corpse lying face down in the muddy debris. "Dante Cababa — he's my best friend," Engracial says. He points to another corpse rotting in the sun. "My cousin, Charana." She was a student, just 22.

Lajara remembers the moment his brother vanished.

They were standing alongside each other side by side with relatives and friends before the surge hit. They stared at the rising sea, then turned to survey the neighborhood behind them, trying to figure out where or if they could run. Then the wave rushed in.

Lajara, Winston and the others dived into the water, and were swept away from each other. After Lajara's face hit the water, he never saw Winston again.

Lajara has trudged through the corpse-strewn piles of rubble and mud, searching for two things: wood to rebuild his home, and Winston. So far he has found only wood.

On Saturday, he set out again. The rat-a-tat-tat of a snare drum echoed across the landscape, as a young boy played the instrument from the roof of a gutted building. It was a grim accompaniment to what has become Lajara's daily march into the corpse-strewn wasteland that was his home, where the sickly sweet stench of death mixes with the salty sea air.

Reminders of the people who once lived here are wedged everywhere among the warped piles of wood, glass and mud: a smiling, bowtie-clad stuffed bumblebee. A woman's white platform shoe. A wood-framed photograph of a young boy.

Suddenly, a neighbor, Pokong Magdue, approached.

"Have you seen Winston?"

Magdue replies: "We saw him in the library."

Lajara shakes his head. It can't be Winston. He's already searched the library.

Sometimes people come to him and inform him that Winston's body has been found. Lajara must walk to the corpse, steel himself, and roll it over to examine the face.

He then must deal with conflicting emotions: relief that the body is not his brother's. Hope that Winston might still be alive. And grief that he still has no body to bury. Because at least then, he says, he could stop searching.

Winston was his only brother. He had a wife and two teenage children. He was a joker who made everyone laugh. He drove a van for a living and was generous to everyone. He was a loving father.

"It's hard to lose somebody like him," Lajara says.

Now, the only trace of his brother that remains is his driver's license: Winston Dave Argate, born Dec. 13, 1971. 177 centimeters tall, 56 kilograms. The upper left-hand corner of the license is gone, and the picture is faded. Lajara leaves it with a friend for safekeeping when he is out hunting for wood and Winston.

He gazes at the card in his hand. "When I want to see him, I just stare at his picture."

Saturday 16 November 2013

http://www.stamfordadvocate.com/news/world/article/Search-for-missing-a-hellish-routine-after-typhoon-4987347.php#photo-5471892

Bus tragedy: samples collected for DNA test

Doctors from the Karnataka Institute of Medical Sciences (KIMS), Hubli, have completed the task of collecting samples from the seven charred bodies — victims of Thursday’s bus tragedy near Haveri — and blood samples of their relatives on Friday.

A team of doctors, led by Professor and in-charge of Forensic Medicine Department of KIMS, Gajanan Naik, and comprising Associate Professor Sunil Biradar and postgraduate students Madhusudhan and Ravindra, started post-mortem at 2 p.m. on Thursday and concluded it at around 11 p.m.

On Friday, they collected blood samples of the close relatives of the victims when they came to claim the bodies. Among the seven killed, five, including three children, belonged to the same family.

Dr. Naik told The Hindu that they had completed the process of collecting samples from the charred bodies for DNA test.

He said, “We have collected samples of muscle, sternum (breastbone) and end of femur (thigh bone) required for DNA profiling.

“These samples, together with the blood samples of the close relatives of the victims, are being sent to the Forensic Science Laboratory in Bangalore for DNA cross-matching,” he said.

He said that the test results may probably take a week’s time to come. Dr. Naik said that post-mortem revealed that there was a woman among the victims.

The doctors have taken X-ray of available joints of the charred bodies for ascertaining the age of the victims.

Dr. Naik said that they would send samples to Belgaum for spectroscopy to help ascertain the exact cause of death.

Till the results come out, the mortal remains will be kept at the cold storage unit of the KIMS mortuary. They will be handed over to the relatives only after the results come, Dr. Naik said.

Saturday 16 November 2013

http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/karnataka/bus-tragedy-samples-collected-for-dna-test/article5355157.ece