{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,9,22]],"date-time":"2026-09-22T06:05:02Z","timestamp":1790057102184,"version":"4.0.1"},"reference-count":25,"publisher":"Frontiers Media SA","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2026,9,22]],"date-time":"2026-09-22T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1790035200000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"content-domain":{"domain":["frontiersin.org"],"crossmark-restriction":true},"short-container-title":["Front. Public Health"],"abstract":"<jats:sec>\n                    <jats:title>Background<\/jats:title>\n                    <jats:p>The disposal of unclaimed remains is an interdisciplinary governance issue at the intersection of public health security and funeral governance in China, involving health, public security, civil affairs and finance authorities. Medical institutions, as the frontline implementers of temporary storage, death-information verification and custody handover, bear obligations that are not matched by corresponding administrative authority. This study addresses three questions: what legal and procedural norms govern the disposal of unclaimed remains in Chinese medical institutions; why power-responsibility conflicts arise and persist; and how they can be resolved through legal regulation.<\/jats:p>\n                  <\/jats:sec>\n                  <jats:sec>\n                    <jats:title>Methods<\/jats:title>\n                    <jats:p>A triangulated qualitative design was adopted. First, national laws and administrative regulations (including the Regulations on Funeral and Interment Administration, as revised in 2025, and the Civil Code) and eight local administrative measures were analyzed through structured policy-text coding. Second, documented disposal cases and public statistics from media investigations and field-research reports (2001\u20132025) were examined. Third, institutional rules across regions were compared along five dimensions: publicity cycle, storage time limit, ash retention period, financial guarantee and departmental responsibility allocation.<\/jats:p>\n                  <\/jats:sec>\n                  <jats:sec>\n                    <jats:title>Results<\/jats:title>\n                    <jats:p>Four structural problems were identified: (1) fragmented legal norms with substantial provincial variation and no unified national implementation standards; (2) nominal cross-departmental collaboration without enforceable linkage mechanisms; (3) a severe power-responsibility imbalance that shifts storage costs, public health exposure and legal liability onto medical institutions; and (4) inconsistent judicial adjudication of disposal disputes. These problems are explained as the outcome of uneven standardization in China\u2019s funeral governance, in which local standards proliferate while universal, enforceable national standards remain absent.<\/jats:p>\n                  <\/jats:sec>\n                  <jats:sec>\n                    <jats:title>Conclusion<\/jats:title>\n                    <jats:p>The 2025 revision of the Regulations on Funeral and Interment Administration provides a window for institutional reform. We propose five integrated strategies \u2013 unified national standards, a multi-departmental collaborative mechanism, dedicated public funding, judicial guidelines and hospital-level internal control \u2013 and conclude that legal regulation of unclaimed-remains disposal should be understood as a standardization project that balances public health security, deceased dignity and institutional equity.<\/jats:p>\n                  <\/jats:sec>","DOI":"10.3389\/fpubh.2026.1897828","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2026,9,22]],"date-time":"2026-09-22T05:40:15Z","timestamp":1790055615000},"update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3389\/crossmark-policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":0,"title":["Disposal of unclaimed remains in Chinese medical institutions: power-responsibility conflicts, standardization deficits, and legal regulation"],"prefix":"10.3389","volume":"14","author":[{"given":"Nanxi","family":"Chen","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"The First People\u2019s Hospital of Zunyi","place":["Zunyi, China"]}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Hailiang","family":"Li","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"The First People\u2019s Hospital of Zunyi","place":["Zunyi, China"]}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]}],"member":"1965","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2026,9,22]]},"reference":[{"key":"ref1","volume-title":"Administrative Measures for the Disposal of Unclaimed Remains in Baotou","year":"2025"},{"key":"ref2","volume-title":"Circular on Further Standardizing the Disposal of Remains and Ashes. Min Ban","year":"2024"},{"key":"ref3","volume-title":"Regulations on Funeral and Interment Administration (Revised in 2025). Promulgated by State Council Order No. 824","year":"2025"},{"key":"ref4","volume-title":"Interim Measures for the Disposal of Unclaimed Remains in Gansu Province","year":"2025"},{"key":"ref5","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"11","DOI":"10.4103\/ijehe.ijehe_10_22","article-title":"Dead body management of epidemic victims: a systematic review and meta-synthesis","volume":"11","author":"Ghanizadeh","year":"2022","journal-title":"Int J Environ Health Eng"},{"key":"ref6","volume-title":"Infection Prevention and Control for the Safe Management of a Dead Body in the Context of COVID-19: Interim Guidance","year":"2020"},{"key":"ref7","volume-title":"Administrative Measures for the Disposal of Unclaimed Remains in Kunming","year":"2014"},{"key":"ref8","volume-title":"Civil Code of the People's Republic of China, Article 994 (Protection of the Personality Interests of Deceased Persons)","year":"2020"},{"key":"ref9","volume-title":"Administrative Measures for the Disposal of Unclaimed Remains in Dongguan","year":"2021"},{"key":"ref10","volume-title":"Administrative Measures for the Disposal of Unclaimed Remains in Jiangmen","year":"2022"},{"key":"ref11","volume-title":"Administrative Measures for the Disposal of Unclaimed Remains in Zhengzhou","year":"2019"},{"key":"ref12","volume-title":"Interim Measures for Remains Disposal in Chongqing","year":"2025"},{"key":"ref13","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"69","DOI":"10.1146\/annurev.soc.012809.102629","article-title":"A world of standards but not a standard world: toward a sociology of standards and standardization","volume":"36","author":"Timmermans","year":"2010","journal-title":"Annu Rev Sociol"},{"key":"ref14","volume-title":"The Gold Standard: The Challenge of Evidence-Based Medicine and Standardization in Health Care","author":"Timmermans","year":"2003"},{"key":"ref15","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"1036","DOI":"10.35723\/ajie.v8i3.603","article-title":"Collaboration as a value in Islamic education from learning from corpse management","volume":"8","author":"Humaidi","year":"2024","journal-title":"Al-Hayat"},{"key":"ref16","first-page":"263","article-title":"Regulatory and legal ensuring the administrative procedure for the protection of personal data about a deceased person","volume":"2","author":"Zadyraka","year":"2024","journal-title":"Jur Scient Electron J"},{"key":"ref17","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"129","DOI":"10.1016\/j.fsisyn.2020.03.007","article-title":"ICRC: general guidance for the management of the dead related to COVID-19","volume":"2","author":"Finegan","year":"2020","journal-title":"Forensic Sci Int Synergy"},{"key":"ref18","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"297","DOI":"10.1590\/S1020-49892004000500002","article-title":"Epidemics caused by dead bodies: a disaster myth that does not want to die","volume":"15","author":"de Ville de Goyet","year":"2004","journal-title":"Rev Panam Salud Publica"},{"key":"ref19","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"411","DOI":"10.1007\/s12024-021-00379-9","article-title":"The handling of SARS-CoV-2 associated deaths \u2013 infectivity of the body","volume":"17","author":"Schroder","year":"2021","journal-title":"Forensic Sci Med Pathol"},{"key":"ref20","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"579","DOI":"10.1007\/s12024-023-00683-6","article-title":"Management of unidentified and unclaimed bodies: a comparison of models from four countries in the Asia Pacific region","volume":"20","author":"Khoo","year":"2024","journal-title":"Forensic Sci Med Pathol"},{"key":"ref21","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"1343","DOI":"10.1007\/s00068-021-01717-w","article-title":"Management of mass casualties due to COVID-19: handling the dead","volume":"47","author":"Petrone","year":"2021","journal-title":"Eur J Trauma Emerg Surg"},{"key":"ref22","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"101999","DOI":"10.1016\/j.jflm.2020.101999","article-title":"Review: the safe handling of a corpse (suspected) with COVID-19","volume":"73","author":"Dijkhuizen","year":"2020","journal-title":"J Forensic Leg Med"},{"key":"ref23","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"1012434","DOI":"10.3389\/fpubh.2022.1012434","article-title":"High rates of SARS-CoV-2 infection in funeral home workers in Ecuador","volume":"10","author":"Ortiz-Prado","year":"2022","journal-title":"Front Public Health"},{"key":"ref24","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"500","DOI":"10.1007\/s12024-023-00661-y","article-title":"Pilot study in Hamburg on the prevalence of SARS-CoV-2 infections in the German funeral industry","volume":"20","author":"Schadler","year":"2024","journal-title":"Forensic Sci Med Pathol"},{"key":"ref25","first-page":"8","article-title":"The lingering corpse in the Chinese urban","volume":"81","author":"Shao","year":"2019","journal-title":"IIAS Newsletter"}],"container-title":["Frontiers in Public Health"],"original-title":[],"link":[{"URL":"https:\/\/www.frontiersin.org\/articles\/10.3389\/fpubh.2026.1897828\/full","content-type":"unspecified","content-version":"vor","intended-application":"similarity-checking"}],"deposited":{"date-parts":[[2026,9,22]],"date-time":"2026-09-22T05:40:18Z","timestamp":1790055618000},"score":1,"resource":{"primary":{"URL":"https:\/\/www.frontiersin.org\/articles\/10.3389\/fpubh.2026.1897828\/full"}},"subtitle":[],"short-title":[],"issued":{"date-parts":[[2026,9,22]]},"references-count":25,"alternative-id":["10.3389\/fpubh.2026.1897828"],"URL":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3389\/fpubh.2026.1897828","relation":{},"ISSN":["2296-2565"],"issn-type":[{"value":"2296-2565","type":"electronic"}],"subject":[],"published":{"date-parts":[[2026,9,22]]},"article-number":"1897828"}}