Only Surgeons And Specialists Can Conduct Post-Mortem

PETALING JAYA, Jan 25 (Bernama) -- Health Minister Datuk Seri Dr Chua Soi Lek said Thursday post-mortems in hospitals can only be done by surgeons and specialists and not by hospital assistants or attendants.
He said surgeons and specialists were responsible for conducting the internal part in any operation but it was normal practice for hospital assistants to do the initial opening of the abdomen.
"If you go to a surgical ward and see how patients are operated, the opening up of the abdomen can also be conducted by a junior doctor. But to say that the post-mortem is conducted by an attendant is not true," he told reporters after appearing on the "Wanita Hari Ini" programme over TV3.
Dr Chua was asked to comment on reports that hospital assistants or attendants were allowed to cut open corpses on the instruction of the pathologist as stated by a witness in the murder trial of a 21-year-old engineering student in Ipoh.
Ipoh High Court Judge Datuk V.T. Singham, in his remarks in Ipoh Wednesday, called into question the practice of instructing hospital assistants or attendants to carry out post-mortems in the presence of a pathologist.
The Ipoh High Court yesterday acquitted five men charged with murdering the student, Mohamed Hosni Fadzil Mohamed Amin, because the prosecution had "failed miserably" to prove a prima facie case against them.
Dr Chua also said that he would investigate a case in which eight HIV sufferers were alleged to have falsified the letters with the result of their screening for the disease to deceive the Islamic Religious Affairs Department into marrying them with their partners.
Thursday's papers reported that the scam was exposed after a medical officer of the Raja Perempuan Zainab II Hospital reported the matter to the Pasir Puteh district police.