Corpses at Mater Dei Hospital’s mortuary will soon start being barcoded in a bid to avoid a repeat of last month’s body switch, which saw the wrong corpse being buried.

A spokeswoman for the Health Ministry told The Sunday Times of Malta when contacted that talks on the matter were under way between the ministry and the Malta Information Technology Agency.

This, she said, was one of the new measures being introduced to avoid a switch similar to that which occurred in June, when the wrong body was taken to a man’s funeral Mass and the cemetery.

READ: Man misses his own funeral following body swap blunder

The incident was discovered when the wife of a second man went to the mortuary to visit her husband’s coffin and he was nowhere to be found. It later turned out that he had been taken to the wrong funeral and buried in the wrong grave.

Sources said Mater Dei management commissioned an internal investigation to determine what had caused the mix-up. Although the report has been concluded, the ministry spokeswoman would not release it to this newspaper.

Sources close to the hospital said that the report had found that although the two workers at the mortuary on the day were to blame for the mix-up in which the wrong coffin was released for burial, the relatives at the first funeral should have realised that the bodies had been switched prior to leaving the mortuary.

The spokeswoman said the two employees were facing disciplinary action before the Public Service Commission.

The men whose bodies were switched died of heart attacks at home and were moved to the Mater Dei mortuary the same day.

When they were first transferred to the mortuary, both bodies had the necessary documents that are normally used for identification.

However, while the staff were preparing the bodies for the funeral rites, they accidentally swapped the documents.

After the discovery was made, the relatives were informed of the blunder and another private ceremony was held the next day.

At the time of the switch, the ministry said that action was to be taken to strengthen control mechanisms that already existed but had failed.

In reply to questions, it said that the internal investigation had recommended keeping the current standard operating procedures while strengthening them with new ones.

“These include an additional identification bracelet – in addition to the body tag already in use – which is to be attached by the funeral directors.

“A new barcoding system is also being implemented with the involvement of MITA,” it said.

matthew.xuereb@timesofmalta.com