For five days, bodies have been rotting on the floor of the overcrowded Sassoon hospital morgue as the municipality van hasn't come to pick up the unclaimed bodies
For five days, bodies have been rotting on the floor of the overcrowded Sassoon hospital morgue as the municipality van hasn't come to pick up the unclaimed bodies
While having a cup of tea next to a dead body isn't usually a big deal for Shiva Maniar (name changed), a dead body cutter at Sassoon General Hospital, yet he has been throwing up each time he has entered the morgue in the past few days.
FILLED BEYOND CAPACITY: The morgue at Sassoon hospital is
overcrowded and emanates a foul odour. Representation pic
The morgue at Sassoon hospital has been running packed to capacity for five days now, because of which some bodies are lying on the floor and have reached an advanced state of decomposition.
This, say hospital authorities, is because the municipal van, which is supposed to take away the unclaimed bodies, hasn't come to the hospital for five days.
Maniar, who has been cutting and stitching up bodies for the past 20 years and works as a helper in the post-mortem centre, said that the stench is so bad that even staffers are refusing to go into the cold storage where the bodies are kept.
"We have a cold storage where 32 bodies can be kept. On an average, we get between 20 and 25 bodies for post-mortem everyday, but in some cases bodies stay back with us as they aren't claimed by relatives. The rule is to keep such bodies for three days, after which they are taken away by the municipal corporation. But the municipality van hasn't come in the last five days," said a technician at the morgue.
Storage
According to him, bodies have to be stored in the cold storage at a temperature of around 4 degree Celsius to avoid decomposition.
"However, there are at least 10 bodies lying on the floor. The cabinets are full and since the bodies outside have not been stored in the mandated cold storage conditions, they have begun to rot really fast," said the technician.
Dr Arun Jamkar, dean, Sassoon hospital, admitted that this was a routine problem at the morgue. "We are always sent more bodies than we have the capacity for as this is the biggest post-mortem centre in the entire state. We have become a sort of referral centre and the delay in lifting bodies by municipal workers sometimes leads to such chaos," said Jamkar.
PMC officials, however, were unavailable for comment.
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