TIRUNELVELI: With no separate room to keep the bodies of the deceased, while completing the formalities to send them to the morgue or hand it over to the respective families, they are being kept for hours in the general ward of Tirunelveli Medical College and Hospital (TvMCH), claimed District Public Welfare Association members. They also alleged there has been a delay in handing over the bodies to the families.
On Monday, the members, led by Head of the Association Mohammed Ayyup, petitioned Collector Shilpa Prabhakar Satish, urging her to take steps to provide a separate room for temporarily keeping the bodies and to hand them over without any delay. Ayyup said when one of the families raised concerns about the delay, the doctors and the hospital staff told them the delay was due to the rules and regulations at place.
The family was made to wait for five hours before the body was handed over to them, he claimed, adding that it was the same in the case of in-patients as well. Ayyup added that he had gone to the hospital on Thursday to visit one of his family members receiving treatment at the general ward.
“The body of a patient, who had died at 3 am, was kept in his bed till 7 am, before being removed from the ward. Also, one of my family members who had died at 8 am was kept in his bed till 12.30 pm. This will psychologically affect families of the deceased as well as several other patients sharing the ward,” he said.
Sources from the TvMCH said that if there was any issue in the confirmation of cause of death, which procedure would take less than an hour, there would be a delay in transferring the body to the morgue. Occasionally, there would be issues with the identification of the deceased, they added.