Autopsy building needs autopsy

The morgue building of the Chittagong General Hospital, left, and Nepal Chandra Das, the lone operator at the mortuary. PHOTO: STAR

On the door a board reads 'Autopsy room, the place where death delights to serve the living'.

Nepal Chandra Das, the only dome (operator) at the mortuary, approaches the dirty three-room morgue situated downhill from the Chittagong General Hospital.

In one of the rooms, lies a body of a child, killed in a road accident the day before. Nepal had already cut open the body and the doctor performed the autopsy on it but the opening was yet to be stitched back.

For Nepal, this has been a routine job for the last 20 years and he was not at all worried to cut open the young lad for it only required an old corroded surgical blade provided by the authorities. Nepal is worried about other aspects of his job, namely when he is asked to open up the head of a human being. The middle-aged dome says he is to remain 'fairly intoxicated' when detaches a skull. Because, he said, the hospital authorities provided him with a carpenter's hammer, a dao (country knife) and a commercial chisel to do the job.

This is the scenario at the only mortuary of Chittagong, where on an average more than 30 bodies are brought for autopsy a month. There is no air-conditioner or freezer to preserve the bodies. Within hour of arrival here, the bodies start to rot and often relatives of the victims receive the rotten bodies.

In the absence of an autopsy table, bodies are kept on the blood stained floor which hardly remains free from germs. An obnoxious smell very often makes the concerned persons sick, said the students and doctors of forensic medicine department of Chittagong Medical College Hospital.

They have been demanding a modern mortuary or at least one that gives some respect to the dead.

The health ministry approved a project of Tk 4 crore to construct a building for a modern mortuary on the CMCH premises under the Forensic Medicine Department. The project mysteriously came to a halt in June after completion of the first floor of the six-story building.

Dr Md Hasanuzzaman Bhuiyan, head of the Forensic Medicine Department of CMCH, said the government steps to modernise the department, including Tk 28 lakh for equipment, have been withdrawn for reasons unknown.

Dr Pradip Kumar Chowdhury, a lecturer at the forensic medicine department, said 'It becomes completely intolerable when a decomposed body is brought for postmortem and the experience of performing autopsy on such a body on such a condition is simply horrible.'

Besides, it lacks in apparatus as well as light and space, he said. The third and fourth year students are the worst sufferers when some 70 to 80 are to attend classes in such a small, dark and unhygienic room of the morgue, he added.

The mortuary, which was formerly under the civil surgeon, has been used by the CMCH for academic and other purposes.

The morgue, built during the British reign, has been used for performing postmortem of the bodies without any repair.