Man who had leg amputated at Spanish hospital will be charged £1,300 if he does not collect it

A man whose leg was held at a Spanish hospital after undergoing an amputation will be forced to pay a fine if he fails to pick it up.

Bidasoa Hospital authorities in Hondarribia, Basque Country, Spain, urged the patient – whom they identified only by his ID card number – to collect the limb within ten days and foot the bill for its disposal.

Authorities said the patient is required to organise ‘the removal and proper management, through a funeral company, of the human remains that are deposited in the Bidasoa Hospital’. 

The declaration – which was published in the Official Bulletin of the Basque Country and was dated August 29 – said the amputee would have to accept cremation charges estimated at 1,500 euros (£1,300), in addition to a fine – thought to be roughly 400 euros (£350). 

The president of the Defensor del Paciente (Patient Advocate) association in Madrid, Carmen Flores, ruthlessly criticised the decision and described it as ‘ethically reprehensible’.

But the director of the Araso Funeral Home in Irun, Carlos Fernandez, claimed that such cases are by no means a rarity. 

‘When a person goes to the hospital and, out of necessity, they have to amputate a limb, the centre forces the patient to take charge of collecting and disposing of the amputated body part,’ Fernandez said.

He added that doctors are more keen to perform amputations thanks to technological advancements in the development of prostheses and rehabilitation techniques.

‘Unfortunately it is much more common today, since the life of a person is valued more than a limb which can be replaced with a prosthesis,’ Fernandez confirmed.

The director of the Araso Funeral Home in Irun (pictured), Carlos Fernandez, claimed that such cases are by no means a rarity

Medical director of the Basque region’s health authorities, Maria Eugenia Alkiza Eizagirre, said the hospital had tried to notify the amputee of their obligations to collect the limb for months, but had not received a response. 

Alkiza said that if the patient does not collect the limb, ‘the file will be transferred to the competent bodies so that they can proceed to urge the forced execution and at [the amputee’s] expense of his obligation to remove and manage the human remains’. 

Alkiza signed the notification on July 21, but it was not published until August 29, giving the patient until this past weekend to arrange the collection and disposal of the limb to avoid the fine.

It is unknown whether the amputee collected the limb in time.