KOLHAPUR: Ants were found crawling on the body of a 20-year-old deceased tuberculosis patient admitted to the general ward of the Solapur Civil Hospital on Monday.
Rakesh More had been admitted to the hospital earlier this month on February 8. He died on Sunday afternoon. The hospital authorities claim that the relatives were asked to take the body of the deceased, but they came late — by almost an hour.
Shakira Savaskar, the acting dean of the hospital, said, “I have ordered an inquiry into the incident. As per my information, the relatives arrived late to claim the body or sign a form to shift the body to the mortuary. The ward was unclean, food left over by the relatives of the patients usually attract ants.”
After the incident was reported, More’s relatives asked the nurses to shift the body to the mortuary. They told the authorities that some of their relatives will be arriving the next day, and requested them to keep More’s body in the mortuary. “There can be some cleanliness-related issues, but the patient died due to the spread of TB infection, and certainly not due to poor treatment or due to ants. We have, henceforth, decided to shift the body of deceased patients to the mortuary within 30 minutes of death to avoid such incidents,” said the acting dean.
