SA team taken by surprise

A TEAM of South African pathologists has returned from tsunami-hit areas where they had the mammoth task of helping to identify the victims killed in the December disaster.

One of the surprises that awaited them was finding that most of the bodies they had examined in the Maldives had floated there from Thailand, Malaysia, Sri Lanka and Indonesia "beautifully preserved", according to one of the pathologists.

The team, dispatched by the Department of Foreign Affairs, identified the remains of two of the 13 South Africans who died in Thailand.

Among them was Lisa Sun Lung, 29, who was on holiday on Phi-Phi island when the tsunami swept her away, and 55-year-old Tony de Gouveia from Johannesburg.

However, De Gouveia's 49-year-old wife, Anita, remains missing.

In Thailand, the team consisted of the Johannesburg mortuary's chief forensic pathologist, Professor Hendrik Scholtz, and the national co-ordinator of SA's disaster victim identification programme, Senior Superintendent Leoné Ras.

The group later covered 92 tiny islands around the Maldives where they examined 180 bodies during March and April.

Scholtz often examines bodies, but in the Maldives he had to dig up a body for the first time in his life.

The group worked in makeshift medical facilities under trees next to the graves, exhuming bodies, removing bones and reburying the bodies.

Some victims were identified when identity documents, wallets and cellphones were found in their pockets, despite having floated across the ocean for so long.

One victim's cellphone worked when it was switched on and his relatives were found after his last call was traced to a bank, said Ras.