Handling pandemic deaths poses unique challenges to mortuary staff, hospitals

Chennai

While hospitals say they have sufficient capacity to handle the bodies, the workload has increased considerably for the mortuary workers.

“If a COVID-19 patient dies at the hospital, the body has to be packed properly and taken to the mortuary as per the protocol. The relatives of the deceased, local medical officers and police officials need to be informed to bury the body. Sometimes they have distant relatives, or need to complete paper work on illness and death reports and other permission from the local authorities that take time. Due to the prolonged procedure, the workload on mortuary workers has increased a lot. But so far, we have not faced any issues over capacity at the mortuary,” said Dr P Vasanthamani, dean of Government Kilpauk Medical College Hospital.

Despite an increase in the number of COVID deaths, hospitals said there was no overload of bodies due to reduction in deaths due to trauma and medico legal cases. However, the doctors at Government Stanley Medical College Hospital said that the bodies have to kept longer in the mortuary due to prolonged paper work to inform the civic bodies, relatives and to obtain permission for funeral.

“The mortuary has sufficient capacity but we need to keep the bodies for longer at times. Due to the lockdown, the number of trauma cases are less and thus deaths due to accidents have reduced. This makes it easier for us to manage the number of bodies at the mortuary. Most of the deaths are due to COVID these days,” said a staff at Government Stanley Medical College and Hospital mortuary.

A casualty medical officer at a government hospital in the city said that there were a number of cases where the patient is brought dead, so they have to wait for the lab results before the funeral.

“More than 70 per cent deaths in the hospital are due to COVID-19 these days. In cases where the patient is brought dead, the bodies need to be kept for more than 18 hours to get the COVID status report. If the cases continue to spike, more cold storage facilities and infrastructure would be required. The capacity is sufficient currently but additional staff might be needed to handle the overload,” said the officer.

Having recorded the highest number of COVID deaths so far, the Rajiv Gandhi Government General Hospital has appointed additional medical officers to ensure timely handling of the bodies.

“We have appointed three additional resident medical officers and three assistant resident medical officers to ensure that the process does not get delayed. Before the pandemic, about 50 deaths were reported daily. But now it is about 20-25 COVID deaths every day. There are extra precautions that we need to take while handling the bodies, which is being managed with additional staff,” said Dr K Narayanaswamy, dean, RGGGH.