Lack of facilities holds up 24/7 autopsy centre

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The government may have announced introduction of 24/7 post-mortem facility in six medical colleges and one general hospital, but given the poor infrastructure and inadequate staff strength in these institutions the facility is unlikely to begin any time soon.

Earlier this month, the government decided to start round the clock post-mortem to support the donor organ transplantation programme.

This would have eased the pressure on the harvesting procedures from the time when a patient has been declared brain dead, besides facilitating the early release of bodies to relatives after the autopsy.

Experts say the delay in handing over bodies to relatives often discouraged kin from consenting to organ harvesting.

While most paper work including the amendment to Kerala Medical Legal Code has been completed, there is still scope for increasing medical, nonmedical staff strength, bettering infrastructure facilities including lighting arra-ngements in mortuaries.

For instance the Thiruvananthapuram medical college which on an average conducts 3,500 post-mortems annually, has around six faculty members, three lab technicians and re-attenders each.

A threefold increase in the existing staff is needed for 24/7 autopsies. Existing faculty members are over burdened with work including court appearances, external examiners duty in various states.

The facilities in mortuaries date back to 1950’s. Infrastructure facilities need to be upgraded with artificial lighting, good general illumination with higher levels of task lighting over the post-mortem tables and dissecting benches.