ISLAMABAD – Contrary to the tall claims of health ministry that it provides comprehensive health cover to the masses, the capital city hospitals have only one mortuary and that too with insufficient capacity to cater to the needs of people in an emergency situation effectively.
One mortuary in the capital city is built in the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (PIMS), one of Islamabad’s major government run hospital and it has the capacity to accommodate only 10 dead bodies. An official in PIMS on condition of anonymity told Pakistan Today that the mortuary in PIMS does not have the capacity to accommodate more than 10 dead bodies in case of any emergency situation such as bomb blasts and severe accidents like the recent plane crash in Margallah hills.
“We place the dead bodies in OPD hence in case of an emergency,” he said. He said that in PIMS there was the capacity to accommodate only 6 dead bodies in the main hospital, 2 in its children hospital and 2 in Mother and Child Hospital (MCH). When contacted, Dr Shareef Astori, spokesperson Polyclinic, another government run hospital in the capital city, said that a mortuary with a capacity of 10 dead bodies has recently been established in the hospital.
However, another official in Policlinic on condition of anonymity said that a mortuary had been set up but unfortunately was dysfunctional. He said that mortuary at Polyclinic had been completed but the delay in its inauguration was not understandable as the hospital also had a medical legal surgeon Dr Arshad Mehmood to operate the mortuary.
Deputy Director Social Welfare, PIMS, Dr Waseem Khawaja told ‘Pakistan Today’ that there was no other opinion that that one mortuary in the whole city was not enough and there must be a federally centralized mortuary with the capacity of 150 to 200 dead bodies.
He was of the opinion that the mortuary should not be established in any hospital’s building because there was already a burden of thousands of patients making it difficult to tackle the dead bodies and carry out DNA tests in an emergency situation. Health Director General Asad Hafeez Sheikh when contacted confirmed that PIMS lacks the capacity to handle the dead bodies in case of any big incident.
He said that another mortuary had been set up at Polyclinic with the capacity of keeping 12 bodies there but it was not operational so far. He said that he did not know the reason for the same.
