DHARMAPURI: Two mortuary workers in Dharmapuri Medical College Hospital were placed under suspension allegedly for asking the family of a dead person to buy cotton gauze to wrap the body after post mortem. The action was taken after a video purported to be of the incident went viral. Dean of the hospital, however, refuted the charges.
Dharmapuri Medical College Hospital is where unidentified corpses and bodies of the dead [patients are kept for postmortem. Recently a video was circulated on social media, where the staff of the postmortem ward were arguing with the kin of a deceased to buy over 8 metres of cotton gauze for covering the body.
K Krishnan of Nallampalli, a relative who bought the mortuary workers cotton on an earlier occasion, said, "Last week a relative of mine died in a road accident near Pennagaram. His body was placed in the postmortem ward of DMCH and there, before the autopsy, we were asked to provide six metres of cotton gauze and we did it."
"When asked, they told us that there is a short supply for the material and if we did not want to linger there for long we should buy it. Like us, many people are buying materials to the ward to hasten the process" he added.
Dean Dr Amudhavalli told The New Indian Express, "The claims about our staff requesting money from the kin are false. However, they had asked the kin to provide cotton gauze which is equally wrong. In the case of shortage, they should have reported it to the hospital administration and we could have made the arrangements. Both the staff responsible have been suspended. We have also set up a vigilance committee and launched a probe into the matter."