Australian morgue refuses body 'cos it's 'too fat'

Sydney, June 19 (IANS/EFE) An Australian funeral home had to keep the body of a 200-kg man un-refrigerated one whole night after a hospital refused it for being "too fat", media reported Thursday.

Joanne Cummings, co-owner of the funeral parlour in Port Headland, in the northeast of the country, had to take the body to her house earlier this week and had to keep the air conditioner on for the entire night, according to the Sydney Morning Herald.

The businesswoman managed to rent a shipping container with internal cooling to store the body and said that last year the health centre of Port Headland refused to accept another corpse of a man weighing 250 kg.

Western Australian health authorities said in a statement that the hospital of Port Headland is only able to store bodies weighing up to 150 kg but are looking into installing equipment that could take bodies weighing up to 300 kg.

Around 14 million out of 22 million Australians have problems of obesity and overweight, one of the biggest ratios among the developed countries of the world.

--IANS/EFE

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