International Shipout - An Exercise In Red Tape

We received a call this week from a local hospital. A man had died while visiting relatives. He was from out of the country and the family is sending him home. In order to do this, we have to fill out a whole slew of paperwork, in copies of 5, no less, and send it to the consulate of the country we are shipping to. Some of the items include: Copies of the decedent's passport photo page, a statement from the local health department verifying the decedent did not die from a communicable disease, an affadavit of embalming, lists of all of the decedent's relatives, both here and back home, and the name and address of the receiving funeral home overseas. Once they receive and approve the paperwork, we can then send the body. However, one of the items they require is a copy of the shipping manifest. So my question is, how can we send a manifest when we can't book a flight until all the paperwork is approved? What we did was book a flight that we had a reasonable chance to make, taking into account the delay in getting the paperwork approved by the consulate. Talk about putting the cart before the horse.