Vikramaditya
Port Blair, Aug 10: In a shocking development a family of Garacharma area was handed over a highly decomposed dead body from the mortuary of G B Pant Hospital. The family members of the deceased Mr. Baljeet Singh, could be seen running from pillar to post this morning, first to get the body and then when they found the body is highly decomposed, they could again be seen running from one room to another of G B Pant Hospial, to get an answer for this negligence.
Sadly there was no one to give a proper reply to them, infact there was no ward-boy to handover the body and it took a long time for the family members to get the body out from the Mortuary.
As per details the Mortuary were found full of dead bodies by the family members and the cooling units inside the Mortuary were allegedly not functioning, which is perhaps the reason why the body had decomposed and swelled up.
This is unimaginable to even think how bad the family members might have felt seeing body of their loved one, in such highly decomposed condition.
The family members alleged that neither officials of Health Department nor the police helped the family in getting justice.
“They could have informed us that the cooling units are not working, we would have arranged portable ice box,” said a family member of the deceased.
Earlier also last week when a local businessmen died at Port Blair the family members of the local businessmen had a hard time to keep the body inside the mortuary as no ward-boys were ready to enter the Mortuary. Finally the family took the body to their home and kept the body in portable ice box obtained from Lion’s Club.
There were also reports of handing over wrong body to people by the staffs of same Mortuary.
Such disrespect to the deceased and high level of negligence is unacceptable, when all people praise and respect health workers as Corona Warrior.
This is a difficult time and health workers are working under tremendous pressure but we should not forget humanity and also should not act in such a negligent manner.
When contacted an officer of Health Department expressed serious concerns over this issue and said that the Mortuary is overloaded and the Health Department is urging public to take dead-body to home for cremation and not to keep the body in Mortuary but for several reasons they prefer to keep body in the Mortuary.
He said that the main problem is that there are around five unclaimed bodies kept inside the Mortuary, which are occupying huge space. “We have informed police about it but they are delaying in disposing the bodies. There is a limit even for machines after which machines can’t work,” the officer said.
He added that in cases of suspected COVID19 deaths, results of COVID19 come after three to four days. “In such cases the body must be cremated without waiting for results as any result, negative or positive will not change anything. When the body is given in packed condition, there is almost no chance of any infection,” he added.
