A man’s body was located in the unclaimed section of the morgue at Larnaca general hospital nearly two months after his death, it was reported on Friday.

Speaking to Sigma TV, the deceased’s son, Klaudios Antoniou said his family had been searching for his father since March after he was admitted to hospital on March 19 with cancer.

Antoniou said the family had not been informed of the admission at the time.

“He wanted to go through it alone. He didn’t want to have people around to support him,” Antoniou said, describing his father as independent and often living or travelling abroad for long periods.

He said the family received two calls from the hospital on March 26 which were not answered.

When they returned the calls shortly after, they were informed that the patient had not been admitted.

“There was no file in the system. They insisted that he was not admitted, nor did he leave, there was no trace,” he said.

Antoniou said the family contacted relatives and hospitals but was unable to locate any record of his father.

He said they were later informed that the man had died at 10.50am on March 26.

According to Antoniou, the body was located last Thursday after the family requested police assistance in checking hospital records.

“After our call to the police, we found him in the morgue, unclaimed,” he said.

He added that the family was told on the same day that the man was not recorded in hospital systems when they made earlier enquiries.

Antoniou said the family raised questions about hospital procedures for recording admissions and deaths, saying they were told that patient data is deleted after death.

He said this was inconsistent with the timeline provided to them.

Antoniou said although the hospital made two calls to the family and no further attempts were made to contact them.

“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,” he said.

He said the family received the body in a closed coffin due to the condition of the remains and that they were not given further explanations during the process.

A complaint has been submitted to Okypy, requesting an investigation into the handling of the case.