Apart from targeted killings and land grabbing, heritage sites and multicultural communities, Karachi also has some famous graves and graveyards with the most notable being the tomb of Pakistan’s founder Quaid-e-Azam, the 1,400-year-old Abdullah Shah Ghazi shrine and the British era’s Gora Qabristan (Christian cemetery).
But a small portion at the historical Essa Nagri graveyard (formerly known as the Country Club Qabristan) serves for an entirely different purpose and there are no graves or tombstones.
In this section, adjacent to the main graveyard, the plane ground is used for burying human organs or body parts only.
Hands, fingers, feet, legs or arms are brought at this ‘Organ Graveyard’ and silently buried by the relatives of patients, whose limbs or any other body parts are amputated at hospitals.
Not only the families, but also several hospitals in Karachi have made arrangements with the graveyard’s management that surgically removed organs may be buried at the place.
According to healthcare experts, during treatment or surgeries, when doctors find a body part affected with infections or gangrene (death of tissues), they remove the affected organ to save the life of the patient.
“Throughout the world, human body parts, tissues, organs, flesh, fetuses, blood or other fluids [removed from patients] are incinerated for the safe disposal of hospital waste. But in Pakistan, though some hospital waste is incinerated, human organs removed during operations are buried,” they said. “Not the Essa Nagri graveyard only, but body parts are being buried at many other graveyards in the city.”
Renowned philanthropist Faisal Edhi attributes the trend to the religious viewpoints of people.
“In Pakistan, people believe incineration of body or its parts is not for Muslims, as it is a religious ritual practiced by Hindus, who cremate their dead,” he said. “So, most people prefer to bury the [surgically removed] body parts.”
Edhi said that as the patients’ relatives do not like the removed body parts being incinerated, most hospitals call Edhi Foundation’s volunteers to take away those body parts or organs that are later buried in the Edhi graveyard.
“Some hospitals even throw the body parts in common garbage dumps near residential areas,” the philanthropist said. “Many citizens call us and inform that a human body part is lying outside their home. We send our vehicles to pick up the body parts and many times we have found stray dogs and other scavenger animals chewing on these organs.”
“Personally, I believe that when birds and animals eat human organs, it might spread diseases,” Edhi said. “But we don’t have any research or related data on this subject.”
At the Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre Orthopedic Ward-17, 20-year-old Zohaib Hassan has undergone an operation, in which surgeons amputated his gangrene-affected foot.
“My son suffered a serious injury in a road accident in our native town, Jacobabad. We brought him here for treatment and the doctors removed his foot,” said Hassan’s father Sahib Dino.
“They handed over the amputated foot to me for disposal, but I had no idea where the graveyard is, so I gave some money to the sweepers for burying my son’s foot,” he added.
When asked why he wanted to bury the amputated foot instead of incinerating it, Dino replied: “How can I? It was the foot of a Muslim and burning human organs is not good in Islam, as Hindu cremate their bodies and organs, not Muslims.”
The second largest public sector hospital in Sindh, Civil Hospital, Karachi, has four orthopedic operation theatres, where at least 20 surgeries are carried out everyday.
“In five to six such operations, infected or damaged organs or body parts are surgically removed. We keep these amputated organs at a certain place, and later hand them over to Edhi volunteers, who bury them in graveyard,” said Civil Hospital’s Orthopedic Department director Prof Dr HD Afridi.
However, the Aga Khan University Hospital (AKUH) has an agreement with the administration of Essa Nagri graveyard for burying all human organs or body parts surgically removed at the AKUH operation theatres. The graveyard administration has also allotted a portion of graveyard for this purpose.
“We keep all amputated human organs separately and later hand them over to the Essa Nagri graveyard, where these body parts are buried,” said AKUH Facilities Management Director Hakim Ali Khan.
Hello,
This is a very important issue that you have raised not only regarding religious beliefs but also it is a big problem faced by many hospitals and doctors as what to do with the organs left. I am facing a similar situation in a neurosurgical research study at AKUH in which I am dealing with patients who undergo de compressive skull surgeries. In such kind of skull surgeries we cut a fragment from the skull bone and preserve it for some days, the purpose is to give extra time for the underlying infection or any pathology to heal that doesn’t heal well if we keep the bone fragment at the time of surgery. The skull bone fragment is re implanted when we are sure that the pathology has healed. According to neurosurgical research a bone fragment can be preserved for six months only as it remains viable during this period of time. _contd_
Frequently we experience those patients who undergo skull surgeries don’t return for their skull fragment to be re implanted on their wound or maybe they die and we are left with their skull bones preserved in our refrigerator. We don’t know what to do with their bones as there are no clear cut guidelines for the disposal of these neurosurgical skull bones.
But first being a Muslim I want to know the religious aspect of such situation that we face, whether we should discard or incinerate these preserved bones? My question is what does Islam say about the organ preservation and disposal or incineration?
Kindly if there is any explanation or instruction regarding surgical organ preservation and disposal or incineration for medical and health purposes, let me aware of that because it will also help in making guidelines for such procedures at our hospitals.
Please email me directly on [email protected].
Regards
Farid Khan
Research Associate
Dept. of Neurosurgery
The Aga Khan University, Karachi, Pakistan.
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