Mulan: A senior official at Nishtar Hospital in Multan has blamed police and rescue officials for the rotting bodies on the roof of the medical facility, after videos of it left Pakistan in shock.
Following reports of several unidentified decomposing bodies on the roof of the medical facility, the Punjab government and the Vice Chancellor of Nishtar Medical University formed separate committees, Geo News reported.
The head of the anatomy department at Nishtar Medical University (NMU), Dr Mariam Ashraf, said rescue officials and the police were responsible for the piling of the bodies in the morgue and on its roof.
Ashraf said the medical facility could not refuse to accept the bodies as it was required to keep them safe.
“The police and rescue officials are asking us to keep him in the hospital. The police and the rescuers are not bringing them back in time. We have written documents in which we have asked them to take the bodies. Since there has a lag, such things happen,” Geo News quoted the official as saying.
The hospital official said the bodies the medical facility receives from the police are usually decomposed and cannot be kept in the morgue.
“Because of their condition, the maggots start eating them and they can travel from one body to another. Therefore, the decomposing bodies are kept on the roof, where there are three rooms.
Asked about the Edhi Foundation’s role, she praised the non-governmental organization but also blamed it for not recovering the bodies, Geo News reported.
“The Edhi Foundation did not collect the bodies from our hospital as they have no burial space in their cemetery,” she said.
“The only reason the bodies are kept on the roof is that the influx is huge and they are not returning to police stations in numbers as they should.”
Garbage claims there were 200 or so bodies on the roof, hospital official said medical facility administration counted the exact number of bodies and shared details with all concerned authorities .
“Let me clarify, only a few bodies were kept above. Putrified bodies are kept in the room.
Ashraf said the bodies, which are handed over to the hospital by the police, are kept in the morgue for a month and in case no one shows up to claim the bodies, they will return them to the police for burial.
“Usually the abandoned bodies we receive are already decomposed to an increased extent. We follow all of our SOPs, nor do we refuse to take decomposed bodies.
In response to a question about the non-functioning mortuaries, she said that the hospital administration had recently held a meeting with the Health Secretary of the Punjab Department of Secondary Health Care and Medical Education.
At the meeting, a new morgue was sanctioned for the hospital as well as funding for civil works for dedicated structures to be built to hold the bodies.
“Our institute absorbs most of the province’s burden in terms of receiving such bodies.”
She said the hospital would not keep badly decomposed bodies in the usual morgue and would upgrade the special infrastructure where these human remains would be kept.
Ashraf also defended claims that several bodies were on the roof and said they weren’t all whole, as autopsied bodies were also among them.
She explained that because autopsied bodies aren’t whole, and their organs and limbs are sometimes not attached to the body, they look like a bunch of human body parts, Geo News reported.
“These medically mutilated bodies looked like there were a lot of them out there.”
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