NBI on Haiyan bodies: No choice but temporary burial

 

MANILA, Philippines – With no refrigerator vans for disaster victim identification (DVI) operations in Yolanda-hit areas, the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) said unprocessed bodies in advanced state of decomposition are left with no choice but a temporary burial. 

 

Dr Wilfredo Tierra, officer-in-charge (OIC) of the NBI Medico-Legal Division, said the bodies will be buried in shallow graves and exhumed later on for processing – an arrangement agreed on with the local government. (READ: DOJ on Haiyan burials: Accuracy over speed)

 

In an interview with Rappler on Wednesday, January 8, Tierra explained that “continuous verbal requests” by their bureau for refrigerator vans had been addressed to various agencies even before Typhoon Yolanda (Haiyan) hit.

 

Because of the less-than-ideal conditions in their DVI operations work site, the team is able to process only 40 bodies compared to what should normally be 150 bodies in a day.

 

Thus far, 418 unidentified bodies have been processed for DNA sampling and buried permanently at the Holy Cross Memorial. The samples will be kept for DNA testing later on. 

 

The ante-mortem phase of the process will involve DNA testing of relatives coming forward to compare with that of the dead for identification.

 

The OIC added that DVI has always been a “tedious, difficult, and costly” process, citing the 5,000 dead bodies in the aftermath of the 2004 tsunami in Thailand which took up to two years to identify.

 

Constraints

 

Tierra’s division deploys a 13-man team working on a rotational 9-day basis – including during the previous holiday season when the 418 bodies were processed and buried at the Holy Cross Memorial, contradicting the pronouncement of Tacloban City Mayor Alfred Romualdez that the team halted operations. (READ: After Haiyan: No man left behind)

 

The team is composed of forensic doctors, photographers, and chemists from the NBI Forensic Chemistry Division.

 

Due to the disproportionate number of government personnel to the dead, the team is forced to do tasks other than the processing of bodies. They have been moving bodies as well – a task supposedly for the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) and the Bureau of Fire Protection (BFP).

 

The NBI team on scheduled rotation, he said, also faces other constraints, including the frequent rain in the area which causes flooding and makes it harder to harvest specimen for processing.

 

In the initial phases, the lack of air transportation was also a problem.

 

Despite the constraints, the NBI assured the public that it is relying on tried and tested protocol – the Interpol DVI standards.

 

Tierra – who has been with the NBI Medico-Legal Division for 17 years now – said the Interpol DVI standards are in accordance with the protocol that the team employed in previous natural and man-made disasters. These included typhoons Reming, Sendong, Pablo, and the 2006 ULTRA stampede.

 

Multi-agency task

 

The NBI Medico-Legal Division is taking the lead in the DVI operations in affected areas, but the Department of Health (DOH) is in charge of the overall management of the dead.

 

Managing the thousands of dead bodies remains a “multi-agency task,” with the DOH, local government units, AFP, BFP, and non-government agencies such as the World Health Organization and International Committee of the Red Cross.

 

Tierra said the scale of Yolanda’s devastation is the biggest that he has encountered in his more than a decade of medico-legal service in government.

 

Super Typhoon Yolanda (Haiyan) devastated parts of the Eastern Visayas in November 2013, leaving thousands homeless and mourning for the dead. – Rappler.com