Chinese mortuaries run out of space as bodies go unclaimed for years
Hospital says half the bodies in its morgue are unclaimed or unidentified, including one that has been there for over a decade
Mortuaries in China are running out of space for new bodies as more corpses go unclaimed, according to local television reports.
The latest example was reported by Hunan Television on Saturday. It said that seven of the 15 chambers at the Central Hospital of Xiangtan city are now occupied by unidentified or unclaimed bodies.
Similar problems have previously been reported by the media in other parts of the country.
“The seven bodies had been here for a very long time, the earliest dating back to 2007,” a doctor managing the morgue said.
“If you calculate the money and resources wasted on such decade-long storage, the figures are huge.”
The hospital estimated that the body deposited in 2007 had cost it 1.7 million yuan (US$260,000).