ACCIDENTS: What happens to John Doe and those without medical aid?

MBOMBELA – Motor-vehicle accidents are horrifying worst-case scenarios which leave us with many “what if?” questions. What if someone without a medical aid or a non-citizen incurs a serious injury or dies in an accident? What happens to unidentified bodies?

Lowvelder has attended many accident scenes where victims who didn’t survive the crash, were travelling without any form of identification. They were often hitchhikers the drivers had picked up, without even learning their names.

The newspaper consulted with the departments of health and home affairs as well and considered the municipal by-laws of a few municipalities in the Lowveld to provide its readers with answers to these questions.

Mr Dumisane Malamule, spokesman for the Department of Health, explained that any person within the boundaries of the country was entitled to be treated by any emergency medical-services entity that arrived on the scene of a car accident. “Paramedics will treat patients and then proceed to identify them.”

If the patient is not a South African citizen, Malamule said in most instances their embassy would inform the service concerned and enter into an agreement regarding the payment for emergency medical services provided.

According to Arrive Alive’s website article titled Medical Aid, Accident and Hospital Admission, paramedics will then try to identify the injured. The ambulance will take him/her to the nearest, most suitable hospital – if you are with a medical scheme, chances are better that you end up at a private hospital.

People reliant on state health care may be taken to the casualty ward of private hospitals to be stabilised. “Those without medical aid are transferred to state hospitals for further treatment, once their condition is stable enough for them to be moved,” the article states.

 

If you are unconscious, but it has been established that you belong to a medical aid, you will be taken to a private hospital. In this case, your family will still need to apply for their medical aid’s approval for future procedures and hospitalisation after your first two days in hospital.

Where membership of a medical aid has not been confirmed, patients are taken to the closest state hospital, where no person may be refused treatment.

The bodies of those who don’t survive accidents, are handled according to procedures that provide for a number of possible outcomes. The police notify the Forensic Pathology Services (FPS) of the death and the location of the accident. A forensic pathology officer travels to the scene and collects the body of the victim.

The body is registered in the death register at the nearest FPS facility and a register and case file is opened to document every step of the process. The SAPS notify the victim’s relatives of his/her death if they can be located, enabling them to formally identify the victim. A post-mortem examination of the body is done by an authorised person (usually a medical practitioner). This is followed by a notification of death and registration of the victim’s death with the Department of Home Affairs – the SAPS, post mortem examiner and home affairs official fill out these notices. The body may then be released from the FPS facility.

Where the victim remains unidentified after he/she has been at the FPS facility for seven days, the SAPS is notified. If the body remains unidentified for another 30 days, he/she is declared “unidentified and unclaimed,” according to Malamule.

A pauper burial procedure is then initiated with the help of the SAPS and the local municipality, he says.

The process of pauper burials entails that the deceased are laid to rest in graves that accommodate up to three bodies each and no tombstones are erected. Pauper burials in Mbombela are conducted by contractors and provision is made for this expense in the municipality’s budget every year. They can also be cremated. National legislation indicates that local municipality has discretion in this regard.