Mumbai: During an inspection of the mortuary and post-mortem centre at Rajawadi Hospital, Ghatkopar, police surgeon Dr Kapil Patil was moved to see the situation of a grieving family. Waiting to collect the remains of a loved one, the family were standing on the narrow lane outside the centre. The waiting room that was supposed to be the place where they could grieve in relative privacy was falling apart and was stuffed with construction material. There was no arrangement for drinking water. Some parts of the ceiling were about to fall off.
In a similar visit to the mortuary at JJ Hospital, he saw the shed over the waiting area outside the mortuary where relatives of patients would wait had been blown away, leaving them with no protection from incessant rains that day. He was told there were not enough staffers to attend to the repair work needed.
Looking at the conditions of the post-mortem centres, Dr Patil ordered structural, fire and electrical audits of all the five centres that he is in charge of. He also realised that none of the centres had a sufficient number of forensic experts and support staff to conduct a post-mortem. Therefore, he wrote to the state government authorities about the lack of manpower in these centres.
All the centres are run by the public health department of the state government.
“During his visit, when he mentioned structural audit of the building, it was the first time someone in authority showed concern about the crumbling down state of the building we work in,” said an employee of the mortuary in JJ Hospital.
Each centre is supposed to have 4 forensic experts but there are a total of 11. The situation is especially bad in the post-mortem centre attached to Rajawadi Hospital where three forensic doctors and three other staff members have to handle cases coming from almost 30 police stations.
“Teaching hospitals like JJ Hospital can still depend on resident doctors and students. It is the non-teaching hospitals like Rajawadi where there is a perpetual shortfall of manpower. With that, being attached to so many police stations means that we have to conduct more than ten post-mortems every day,” said an employee of the post-mortem centre at the hospital.
This request from Dr Patil has already got the government’s approval. Director of health services Dr Sadhna Tayade has now forwarded the requisition for more staff to the Directorate of Medical Education and Research (DMER). In the letter, she has asked that eight forensic medicine experts be recruited on a contractual basis until the government can start the process of hiring the experts needed in the post-mortem centres.