John Wilbert & Sarthak Kanjilall
Port Blair, May 21: It has been alleged by family members of a deceased that they saw maggots inside Mortuary of G B Pant Hospital, where they kept dead body of a family member for nearly 28 hours.
According to reports, a man, said to be a resident of Dairy Farm, Port Blair committed suicide early morning on 20th May 2020, following which his dead body was shifted to the GB Pant Hospital for Post Mortem.
As per the family members of the deceased, as the only available tray inside the mortuary was stinking badly and there were also blood spots and dirty liquid inside it, they opposed keeping the dead body of their family member inside it but no one heard their objections and finally they had to keep the dead body inside the same tray.
“Later on the same day we got a call from the Hospital staffs and we were asked to bring portable freezer from TSG Groups, to keep the body,” said a family member of the deceased.
The instructions were followed by the family members and they brought portable freezer for the body, in which the dead body was kept for almost a day. While shifting they body, they saw the body is wet with the dirty water and the body also had blood like liquid on the back portion of the body. When the family members took out the body for post mortem today, they noticed that the body was slightly decomposed, which according to them was because the body was earlier kept in the mortuary tray for some hours, that was stinking badly and had dirty water on it.
“We have seen maggots inside the said tray when a fire brigade truck came to clean the mortuary and the body trays this morning, while we were present at the spot. When the truth was crystal clear in front of everybody, we were told to give the final rituals to the body directly without uncovering the body or even giving a final bath to the body,” said another family member of the deceased, who does not want his name to be quoted.
The family members of the deceased have also alleged that the Air Conditioners inside the mortuary were not working properly.
A few people who came to take the body today also vomited after seeing the condition inside the Mortuary.
When Andaman Sheekha contacted the Director, Health Service, Dr. Omkar Singh he initially clarified that the maintenance of the mortuary was taken care of by the ANIIMS and not by Directorate of Health Services, although he accepted that there is an issue of the excessive dead body inside the Mortuary. “We approached PBMC for disposing of some dead bodies lying in the mortuary for long and they have now disposed off 03 dead bodies today,” said Dr. Singh said yesterday.
As far as the foul smell is concerned, the DHS said that because there were unclaimed dead bodies in the mortuary for more than 03 months, there might be some smell, however, today while talking to Andaman Sheekha once again on this same subject, he assured of repairing the Air Conditioners in the mortuary by today itself, is it is found that ACs are out of order.
Andaman Sheekha also contacted the Director, ANIIMS, Dr. Mondal and according to him, only the autopsy unit in the mortuary belongs to ANIIMS, “taking care of the cold storage part is still the responsibility of the Directorate of Health Services, Dr. Mondal said.
“Once the entire GB Pant hospital is handed over to us, only then, we will have complete authority over the mortuary,” Dr. Mondal added.
Considering all the aspects in the matter, the lapses in the mortuary is probably due to the lack of coordination between the Directorate of Heath Service and ANIIMS, hopefully, both the units will soon have a one-on-one discussion in this regard and have the utmost clarity, so that people do not suffer.
