Bhubaneswar: A disturbing foul odour has gripped city based Capital Hospital as the freezers in the mortuary there have been lying defunct since quite some time now.
The hospital, that handles more than 90 per cent of autopsies in the city, has only three freezers in its mortuary to manage the overwhelming task at hand.
Despite the fact that the medical has three freezers, two had not been working since a month and the remaining one stopped working three days back forcing the emergency staff to put bodies outside the freezer in the morgue.
This, however, has turned troublesome for everyone else who comes to the hospital. The unbearable odour from rotting bodies makes life difficult for the hospital staff, visitors, patients and their attendants alike.
Most affected are the ones visiting the gynecology department – that lies near next to the morgue. Patients there were seen throwing up owing to the bad smell. So was the case of policemen and an ambulance driver who visited the hospital Wednesday.
While many complained of negligence on parts of the hospital administration for this issue, the hospital superintendent tried to play it safe.
“The freezers have stopped working since past three days. Repairing has been going on since Wednesday after a technician from Kolkata arrived here. Even though he tried all day, he was unable to fix it. That said, we hope that he will be able to fix it soon,” said the superintendent without explaining why the administration had to wait until all three freezers stopped working.
The technician, on the other hand, while claimed that the compressors along with few other mechanical parts have gone bad, he could not give any estimated timeline for the repairs to get over.
A large number of patients, meanwhile, have started shifting to private nursing homes owing to the stink.
PNN
