Rourkela: Unclaimed bodies cannot be preserved anymore in Rourkela Government Hospital (RGH) as its refrigeration system has gone defunct, a report said.
The hospital authorities have put up a notice in the Out Patient Department (OPD) over the non-operational freezer at the mortuary to keep the doctors updated.
The doctors have been asked to communicate the problem to the attendants of the deceased so that they can take a decision.
Though the cooling system in the morgue has not been working over the last one month, the authorities seem to have not taken the matter seriously, locals said.
According to the law, an unidentified body is preserved in mortuary for at least four days. In the absence of a freezer, this would not be possible anymore. Similarly, there is a need to preserve the body of a person for over 24 hours if the family of the deceased lives out of the state. But in the present situation, this is also not possible.
“Imagine a scenario when a traveler from some other state suffers a sudden death. The body would decay by the time the deceased’s family arrives at the hospital. The mentally hurt kin would have no option but to cremate the decomposed body,” said a private practitioner of the city.
The government hospital here shouldn’t be neglected while the city has been accorded Smart City status, said a government employee. The refrigeration system either be repaired or replaced as soon as possible, he added.
When contacted over the issue, RGH’s deputy chief medical officer Dr S Kabisatpathy said the freezer with a capacity to preserve eight bodies has been gone defunct for the last one month. Though no untoward incident has been reported during this period, the problem would be solved soon, the officer added. PNN