A man’s body was found in the unclaimed section of the morgue at Larnaca general hospital nearly two months after he died, after his family asked police to help trace him through hospital records.
The dead man’s son, Klaudios Antoniou, said the family had been looking for his father since March and had not been told when he was admitted to hospital on March 19 with cancer. Antoniou said the family received two calls from the hospital on March 26, but when they returned them shortly afterwards, they were told the patient had not been admitted. They later learned that he had died that same day at 10.50am.
By last Thursday, the search had become a grim administrative mystery. The body was located only after the family requested police assistance in checking the hospital’s records, and they were told on the same day that the man did not appear in the hospital systems when earlier enquiries were made. Antoniou said the family was then shown the body in a closed coffin because of the condition of the remains.
The details raise serious questions about how the hospital handled admissions, death records and follow-up contact with relatives. Antoniou said the family had been informed that patient data is deleted after death, a claim that only deepened their concern about why no trace of his father could be found when they first asked for information.
He said his father had wanted to face his illness privately. “He wanted to go through it alone. He didn’t want to have people around to support him,” Antoniou said.
But the absence of a record, he said, became its own injury. “There was no file in the system. They insisted that he was not admitted, nor did he leave, there was no trace,” he said. “After our call to the police, we found him in the morgue, unclaimed.”
For the family, the missed calls became the most painful part of the case. “There was absolutely no other attempt. There were two unanswered calls and since they were not answered, I lost the opportunity to bury my father,” Antoniou said.
A complaint has now been submitted to Okypy, asking for an investigation into how the case was handled. The family wants answers not only about why they were not informed of the admission, but also about how a patient could die in a public hospital and remain unidentified in the system while relatives were searching for him.
The unanswered question is no longer where the man was. It is how a hospital record-keeping failure, a missed call and a delayed police check left one family searching for almost two months before finding their father in the morgue.
