Hospital apologises to family for son's post-mortem delay

The Mater Hospital in Dublin has apologised to the family of a young AIDS victim, whose body lay in the morgue for five days because the hospital did not have the facilities to conduct a post-mortem.

Mr Tom Kehoe, the Mater's patient services manager, said it was "very unfortunate" that it was unable to carry out the post-mortem. "While we have relatively good post-mortem facilities, we do not have facilities to do post-mortems on infectious cases."

The Dublin man, aged about 30, was a long-term patient at the Mater. He died in the hospital a fortnight ago and a post-mortem was carried out subsequently in the city morgue.

His parents are believed to be taking legal advice.

Mr Kehoe said a special unit for conducting post-mortems on infectious cases would be included in its new extension, currently at the planning stage. The hospital had examined the possibility of installing such a unit in the existing building but found it would have cost £350,000.

Mr Tony Gregory TD (Ind), who has raised the issue with the Minister for Health, Mr Cowen, said the case highlighted the low priority given to AIDS sufferers in the health care system.

"Where a hospital has a long-term patient with HIV and that patient dies you would expect it would follow through with what was required. But normal standards don't seem to apply in the case of AIDS victims."

In his reply, Mr Cowen said the Mater had access to other hospitals and the city morgue for post-mortems on such patients.