Hyderabad: With the heavy load of bodies in Osmania General Hospital and Gandhi Hospital, there has been a long-pending demand that the mortuaries be set-up in area hospitals and the police stations must be attached to the same.
Dr Sureendar Reddy, former head of the department of forensic medicine at Gandhi Medical College, explained, “The area hospitals in Barkas, Golconda, Vanasthalipuram, Malakpet and others must be made functional. There is a clause under the act that the area hospitals must have mortuaries but these are not functional as police stations are not attached to them. With the city growing far and wide, there must be mortuaries at these hospitals.”
Forensic medicine experts have made several representations to the state government to get the set-up in place at the centres that are far from the city. At present, in case of an accident or unclaimed body, the cadaver travels 30 to 40 km to reach OGH or GH.
A professor of forensic medicine in government medical college on the condition of anonymity said, “We have forensic doctors and they can be employed in area hospitals whereby the load on the main centres in the teaching hospitals will reduce. This will go a long way in handling the cadaver and also take the load off the teaching hospitals which are presently dealing with too many cases.”
Experts have time and again been pleading that the unclaimed bodies that are in good condition must be allowed to embalm so that they can be used for teaching in medical colleges. With the strength now increased to 200 and 250 medical students per batch, the presence of one body for teaching is not enough.
Due to allegations of sale of bodies, the embalming process is very bureaucratic and it requires written consent from the medical fraternity.
A senior professor at Osmania Medical College explained, “For medical teaching, we are now dependent on cadavers donated for scientific research. Very few unclaimed bodies are now being used for medical research due to allegations and complaints that came up a few years ago. This has now worked in the good interest of science and medical education.”
OGH morgue freezers to be functional again
With reports in these columns highlighting the issue of non-functional freezers and lack of puff-room in mortuary, the Osmania General Hospital administration has woken up from its slumber and started efforts to get them functional again.
Director of medical education Dr M. Ramani said OGH has a budget to take care of repair of equipment in mortuary. The superintendent and the forensic head have the authority to take decisions and set things right.
Technicians examined two defunct freezers and another two that frequently develop problems, beside six non-functional six-body units that were kept at a distance from these freezers. It will take a few more days to get the problems resolved.
Bodies that reach the mortuary after office hours are kept in the freezer to carry post mortem examination the next day. The freezers should be in a good working condition with required cooling. Else, the bodies are at risk of decomposing.
M. Narayana Reddy, a retired forensic HoD at Osmania, said the hospital should ideally have freezers and cold rooms to store at least 60 to 70 bodies at a time. “In 2005, OGH mortuary had the capacity to store 93 bodies. Now 30-odd bodies can be stored. More cold rooms (puff rooms) should be made available instead of freezers that require more maintenance and repairs,” he said. It’s better to remove these freezers that store four to six bodies and instead build a cold room with required A/C facilities to store nearly 20 bodies, he said.
