The Sylhet Osmani Medical College Hospital still lacks a mortuary cooler even 30 years after the hospital morgue was established, seriously hampering the forensic evidence preservation and post-mortem examinations.
According to the hospital sources, the SOMCH was established in 1962 and the morgue of Shaheed Dr Shamsuddin Hospital, erstwhile sadar hospital in the city, was shifted there in the beginning of 1981.
The forensic physicians are forced to complete the post-mortem examinations quickly in the absence of a mortuary freezer and it sometimes causes problem in preparing accurate reports, the hospital insiders said.
‘It is necessary to preserve unidentified bodies, especially those of accident victims, for several days to be sure of their identities. But we have no scope to do it here,’ a forensic expert in SOMCH said.
He said the dead bodies, which are kept at the mortuary to ascertain their identities, begin to decompose, emitting bad smell and polluting the hospital environment, and so, the authorities perform the post-mortem examinations of the bodies as unclaimed.
Even many bodies, the post-mortem examinations of which are not possible instantly because of unavoidable reasons, begin decomposing before the examinations, hampering the preparation of post-mortem reports, the hospital sources said.
Talking to New Age, Sylhet Osmani Medical College principal Osul Ahmed Chowdhury acknowledged the importance of a mortuary freezer at the hospital and said the higher authorities concerned had been requested repeatedly to set up a cooler at the mortuary.
‘The authorities concerned are aware of the subject. We hope, they would take soon an effective step to set up a mortuary cooler,’ SOMCH’s infrastructural assistant director Ehteshamul Haque Chowdhury said.
