The pending need to modernise or renovate mortuary at Osmania General Hospital (OGH) got triggered after Telangana Health Department officials decided to make arrangements to conduct Post-mortem Examinations (PME) after sunset, at hospitals.
Doctors and staff from OGH have been requesting the mortuary to be renovated: repair leakages, improve drainage lines, additional freezer boxes, change look of the hospital, and provide other resources.
The need was amplified the most in December 2017 when rats chewed a part of a dead body in the mortuary.
Alike to construction of a new building for the hospital, the plans to renovate the mortuary are not executed yet.
Assurances to modernise were made earlier.
Former Minister of Health Minister C Laxma Reddy, who visited the OGH mortuary in April 2018, stated that all mortuaries in the State would be modernised. A team of forensic doctors were supposed to visit mortuaries in other States to study requirements to modernise the facility here. However, the assurances did not materialise, except provision of a few more freezer boxes, and other resources.
Sources said that the mortuary is still in need of repairs, or better, renovation. “It takes around ₹4.5 crore to ₹5 crore to modernise the mortuary.
The estimates were submitted to senior officials a few years ago. Besides this, estimates for temporary repairs too were submitted. Since a decision is taken to conduct PMEs in the evenings too, there is a hope that the need would be addressed,” said sources.
They added that the list of requirements and amount needed for the works are already on the desks of the senior officials.
Around 4500-5000 PMEs are conducted at the mortuary in a year.
The mortuary at Gandhi Hospital is in better condition. Doctors and staff there conduct around 5,500 autopsies in a year.
