Death, they say ends in the morgue. At the GoaMedical College Morgue, it kick starts it.
The over 25-year-old GMC’s morgue has beenGoa’s only postmortem facility and despite the best of intentions, is turningout to be a living microbial bomb. Creepers snaking into the building, loads ofmedical waste discard outside sharing space with anxious relatives waiting toclaim bodies.
For a facility that handles all of Goa’spostmortems, often between 3-5 a day, the facility is anything but safe. “Allhygiene and safety measures are followed by us” says Dr Madhu Ghodkirekar,Assistant Professor, Forensic Sciences. Unlike in the past when overalls wouldbe washed, GMC now has single use overalls.
“Wetreat all bodies as HIV infected, as in most cases we do not know which one isinfected or which is not”, adds Dr Ghodkirekar. The procedure is that afterevery postmortem, the doctors discard their overalls, which is promptly burnt.What The Goan discovered was heaps of used gloves lying rightoutside the morgue atop piles of burnt overalls. Contamination in medicalterminology can happen also through untreated medical waste as well as microbesfloating around.
Dr Ghodkirekar however insists “we do notreuse gloves, face mask or others. We use new sets of kit every time”. For afacility handling over 1500 death cases annually, the chance of freak microbesflying out of sloppy handling of overalls is quite high.
But it is not just the unhygienic conditionand contamination around the morgue that is a cause for concern. Only otherproblem with GMC morgue is its capacity. GMC has storage facility for 64 bodiesat the moment. Currently, all the slots are occupied. Often with bodies thatawait their fate for a very long time.
The facility has famous cases like Ciprianowho was a victim of police brutality and even Scarlett Keeling whose body wentback to UK after three years. “If there is any major incident where 25 peopledie, we won’t able to accommodate them” adds the morgue deputy. Interestingly,the morgue is amongst the biggest in any State in India. But its hygiene levelsleave much to be desired.
Though a new morgue is stuck at theconstruction level, its status too became questionable. The new government hasquestioned the cost of equipment being acquired which was billed at Rs 16crore, almost four times the actual cost.
Yet with the new facility nowhere in sight,the non-adherence to basic medical waste disposal is turning the morgue into arecipe for destruction.
