In a shocking incident, a Chinese hospital dumped 16 dead foetuses near a river bank, the latest such case to expose chronic loopholes in the country's hospital management system.
The dead bodies, wrapped in hospital bags, were found by local residents on a riverbank wasteland in Dezhou, Shandong province, on February 28, Yang Zhibao, deputy head of the city's municipal health bureau said.
Initial investigations found that the bodies had been dumped there in early February by Zhang Jinhe, a mortuary worker at the Maternal and Children's Hospital of Dezhou, Yang said.
Zhang, a deputy head of the hospital and a director of the ward were removed from their posts as punishment, Yang said, citing a Ministry of Health regulation issued in 2010 banning the disposal of the corpses of foetuses as 'medical waste'.
Police had previously ruled out foul play. Doctors at the hospital said they perform roughly 100 surgeries to remove dead fetuses from mothers' wombs each year, and about half of these families request that the hospital to dispose of the bodies, state-run Xinhua news agency reported.
This is the second case of dead infants' bodies being improperly disposed of in a month, as well as a reminder of another shocking case that happened in Shandong two years ago.
Two mortuary workers had dumped the bodies of 21 infants and foetuses near a river in the city of Jining in 2010.
Authorities had moved to detain the mortuary workers amid public uproar, saying the two allegedly made agreements with the families to dispose of the bodies for a fee, the report said.
In some parts of China, especially in poor rural areas, parents are reluctant to take the bodies of their dead babies home for a funeral, believing it will bring bad luck.
They would rather leave the corpse in a corner of the hospital or pay someone to bury it.
The Ministry of Health had issued a regulation in 2010 ordering hospitals to treat dead foetuses as bodies, not hospital waste.