End of the road for city's mortuary

Tauranga Hospital's mortuary will close at the end of next month with bodies requiring a post-mortem examination having to be transported to  Rotorua or
 Hamilton.
 
The district health board had been contracted by the Ministry of Justice to provide facilities for coronial post mortem examinations.
 Bay of Plenty District Health Board (DHB) chief operating officer Phillip Balmer said the mortuary was being closed because it failed to reach the required standard and cost too much to upgrade.
He said an upgrade would cost an estimated $2 million. "The DHB does not require a mortuary for its own purposes and does not have funding to carry out the required upgrade."
Mr Balmer said the decision to close the  facility was made by the health board earlier this year and the Ministry of Justice was given six months' notice of the intention to withdraw from the contract.
The Ministry refused to disclose the amount of funding provided to the health board to run the mortuary, or the contractual terms, describing them as "commercially sensitive".
However, Heather Baggott, the Ministry of Justice's acting general manager of special jurisdictions, said the Ministry had been told the mortuary was to be demolished as part of Tauranga Hospital's building programme.
Ms Baggott said the health board had advised the Ministry that the mortuary did not meet the required standards, and following this, the health board was given two years to bring the facility up to the required level.
Ms Baggott said bodies needing a post-mortem examination would now be sent out of Tauranga.
"The current plan is for bodies from Tauranga to be transported to Rotorua Hospital during week days and after hours urgent post mortems will be undertaken at Waikato Hospital. All suspicious deaths will be sent to Auckland as they have always been. Auckland Mortuary is where the forensic pathologists are based, and this will not change.
"The bodies will be transferred for post mortems, however the coronial inquest, if one is required as determined by the coroner, will still be held in Tauranga. We do not expect any significant delays, however there will be transport time involved."
Ms Baggott said many other regional centres had to transfer bodies to mortuaries in other centres.
Mr Balmer said the health board already had arrangements in place with local undertakers to deal with bodies for which a post-mortem examination was not required.
"Undertakers have facilities that allow for appropriate storage and viewing of loved ones, and are well-versed in cultural considerations."
There also appeared to be confusion over the consultation process leading up to the decision to close the mortuary.
Ms Baggott said the Ministry had been told local iwi were aware of the move to shut the mortuary  and there were no issues from their perspective.
However, Mr Balmer said the health board had the Ministry of Justice to manage all consultation around post-mortem examination coronial services, however the health board was currently in discussions to meet  iwi and other stakeholders to discuss the situation.
Victim Support's general manager of operations, Kevin Tso, said his organisation would monitor the situation, and if it felt it was causing problems, they would raise the issue with the appropriate minister.
 "Whilst people can be concerned now in advance of a service moving out of town, we don't actually face it until it happens," Mr Tso said.
 He said it was  important  victims understood the process surrounding post-mortem examinations.