Free scattering of ashes offer helps ease shortage of cadavers for students

A shortage of human cadavers for the city's medical schools has been eased by an unusual offer - free scattering of your ashes when you die if you agree to donate your body for study.

The offer, launched by the management board of the Chinese Permanent Cemeteries early this year, has prompted 149 people to register as donors. Their bodies will go to the medical faculty at Chinese University.

The city's medical schools have long struggled with a shortage of donated corpses, which students need for their anatomy studies. Traditional Chinese culture requires as much respect as possible be paid to the deceased, and most Chinese are reluctant to agree to donate their bodies.

The University of Hong Kong's medical faculty receives a maximum of five corpses each year. Many of the 20 corpses needed for research and autopsy training come from the Food and Environmental Hygiene Department, which collects unclaimed corpses of homeless people.

Under the new offer, the bodies of people registered for the programme will given to the university for anatomical studies.

After use, the corpses will be cremated and the ashes scattered in a memorial garden in Tseung Kwan O managed by the cemeteries' board of management.