Hyderabad: The sorry state of affairs at Osmania General Hospital, one of the oldest government hospitals in the state, can be gauged from the fact that there are no proper facilities to preserve bodies, especially the unidentified ones.
The puff rooms are equipped with air-conditioning facility of below 2 degree Celsius to preserve the unidentified bodies for a few days before they are taken away by GHMC for the last rites. However, a big hospital like OGH does not have a functional puff room for the last few years. Hence, unidentified bodies, after post-mortem, are left in the open in an abandoned old autopsy theatre.
The old puff room is not functional and in a irreparable condition. Hence, Osmania authorities had decided long ago to create another puff room, but this is not yet ready. Dr Taqiuddin Khan said the work was almost complete, but there are some problems with the A/C facility.
“The contractor installed the A/C facility, but the cooling was not as per desired levels. We apply salt before stitching the bodies, so as to prevent release of fluids and bloating, and to ensure that they do not get decomposed. If the air-conditioning is not effective, the puff-room will not serve any purpose,” he pointed out.
Health minister C. Laxma Reddy told Deccan Chronicle that the puff room at OGH would be operational soon. A new puff room is operational at Gandhi Hospital, he said.
Even the freezers to store bodies that reach the mortuary at odd hours are not of much help. The mortuary has eight freezers with a capacity to store four bodies in each freezer. However, two freezers are not in operation. This means the hospital could not preserve more than 24 bodies at a time.
