Ministry assists in postmortems of dead fishermen

Nadira Gunatilleke

The Health Ministry has made arrangements to speed up postmortems of fishermen to hand over their bodies to their families quickly, a Health Ministry spokesman said.

Thirty one fishermen were among those killed in Friday’s cyclonic storm that hit coastal areas.

The spokesman said Health Services Director General Dr Palitha Mahipala took steps to send a special team of judicial medical officers to Balapitiya Hospital to speed up the postmortems on 21 fishermen whose bodies are lying at the Balapitiya Hospital.

The team of judicial officers will complete postmortems and release the bodies to their families as soon as possible. Injured fishermen are receiving treatment at state hospitals, he said.

It was reported that 31 fishermen died in the cyclonic storm while another 31 went missing. Several other fishermen who were injured are receiving medical treatment, the spokesman said.