At GT Hospital, a sweeper helps with post-mortems
November 20, 2006
Mortuaries in most of the state and Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC)-run hospitals are reeling under severe staff crunch. No wonder they are always full of bodies waiting for post-mortem. This apart, poor hygiene standards have left doctors and attendants working there vulnerable to infections. A case in point is King Edward Memorial (KEM) Hospital in Parel, one of the main civic hospitals.
Of its sanctioned strength of 13 medical staff —two professors, three assistant professors and 8 lecturers—only three remain. I have to do 48-hour shifts. There is too much work and that’s when negligence occurs. Even after ensuring that bodies from two police stations go to Nair Hospital, we can’t cope,’’ grumbles a doctor at the KEM mortuary. So much so, attendants have to double up as a carrier, body cutter and an assistant.
Dr Shishir Ruia, who recently quit KEM says, “Despite the provisions, the posts have not been filled. We end up doing 8-10 post-mortems a day. It’s pathetic.” “We do have a shortage of registered doctors for conducting post-mortems,” admits deputy dean Dr Anand Rankhambe. “We advertised for four positions twice on our bulletin board and in newspapers. But we haven’t received a response.” GT Hospital is no better. “Nobody wants to work in the mortuaries that leave us with no choice but doing double shifts,” said the only sweeper there. He was called back from holidays to assist at the post-mortem centre for an emergency case.
The scene, therefore, is all too familiar: Naked bodies piled up on top of each other, blood-stained floors and unbearable stench. The state-run Rajawadi mortuary has only one body cutter, two assistants and one caretaker per shift.
“The staff is repeatedly absent from work because of poor hygiene conditions. They keep falling ill. Last year, three staff members died,” said a source. The near-crumbling structures of mortuaries and the dilapidated gadgets add to problems. The freezers are old and the body boxes don’t work. “How can one expect a freezer to work fine when the number of bodies are more than the capacity? Temperatures will obviously fluctuate,” said a source at the Rajawadi mortuary.The staff at the mortuaries is always at risk of infections if precautionary measures aren’t followed. Chandigarh’s Department of Forensic Medicine and Toxicology study states an autopsy may subject the doctor and other staff to a wide variety of infectious agents such as HIV, Hepatitis B, Hepatitis C and mycobacterium tuberculosis.
Doctors agree, but admit precautions here are limited. “It is sheer luck that I do not have any infectious disease as of now, just very high BP. But it’s an occupational hazard,’’ said a doctor at the Cooper Hospital mortuary.
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