• Punjab CM, Nishtar VC order inquiries
• Anatomy dept head denies reports of 500 bodies, claims putrefied cadavers used for ‘educational purposes’

LAHORE: After disturbing visuals of putrefied bodies supposedly abandoned on the roof of the Nishtar Hospital’s mortuary in Multan were shared on social media, a deeper look into the distressing incident reveals it is more of a case of violation of medical ethics and standard operating procedure (SOP) than anything nefarious.

Following a massive media uproar, the Punjab government also sprung into action on Friday and ordered an inquiry into the incident, while medical experts termed the whole episode “inhumane, unethical and a violation of SOPs”.

Punjab Chief Minister Chaudhry Parvez Elahi also took notice of the matter and sought a report from the healthcare secretary. He said it was inhumane to throw bodies on the roof of the hospital, and strict disciplinary action should be taken against the responsible staff.

The Nishtar Medical University’s vice chancellor has constituted a three-member committee to investigate the matter. The committee members include Basic Sciences Dean Dr Abbas, associate professor Dr Ghulam Mustafa and campus in-charge Dr Tariq Saeed.

Meanwhile, Anatomy Department head Prof Dr Maryam Ashraf tried to explain in a video statement how the hospital treated unidentified and unclaimed bodies and how decaying bodies were used for educational purposes by medical students.

She said the hospital had a mortuary where unidentified and unclaimed bodies were kept, while the bodies that started decomposing were placed in airy rooms on the roof of the mortuary. She claimed some of the unclaimed bodies were used for teaching medical students, strictly under the rules and regulations of the home and health departments.

She also denied reports of the presence of over 500 bodies, maintaining that people belonging to the medical profession would understand the situation. She appealed to medical professionals to educate people about the use of cadavers for medical purposes.

Talking to the media on Friday, Adviser to the Punjab Chief Minister Tariq Zaman Gujjar said a whistleblower had tipped him off that bodies were rotting on the roof of the mortuary. He said when he reached the morgue, the staff would not open the doors. Later, he said, he found four bodies lying in the open on the roof, while 25 others were dumped in a closed room that looked like a storage area.

Mr Gujjar said he was told the bodies were used by medical students. “The bodies, after being used for educational purposes, should have been given a proper burial with funeral prayers, but they were abandoned on the roof,” he remarked.

‘Unclaimed’ bodies

Multan City Police Officer (CPO) Khurrum Shehzad Haider told Dawn the police submitted bodies to the mortuary under Section 174 of the PPC, adding they also advertised unclaimed bodies in newspapers for identification. These were handed over to their heirs after completing legal formalities.

He further explained the police received two types of bodies — those related to a crime or those that died of natural causes. “Police get a postmortem examination done on the bodies with injuries, while those that died of medical complications are submitted to the mortuary without a postmortem,” he added.

Mr Haider said currently the mortuary housed 74 bodies, including putrefied ones. “I found out that since putrefied bodies cannot be frozen, these are placed in a caged enclosure, but definitely not under the sun,” he said.

The CPO clearly stated that bodies should be preserved by implementing the SOPs and dumping them out in the open was inhuman.

To a query about police permission required for using bodies for medical purposes, he said the college did not report to them about it. However, Nishtar Hospital spokesman Dr Sajjad Masood claimed “we always write to the station house officer concerned before using bodies for educational purposes”.

Meanwhile, a former principal of Nishtar Medi­cal College, Laiq Hussain Siddiqui, told Dawn it was usual for unclaimed and unidentified bodies to be used for medical purposes by the university, but they were preserved after embalming and stressed the putrefied bodies were not thrown out in the open but kept in an airy room that was established during his tenure.

He said bodies were handed over to the college’s anatomy department to be used for teaching, while the decomposed bodies were not kept in the mortuary due to foul smell. The anatomy department used the bones of human bodies to teach medical students and such bodies were preserved by injecting chemicals into them.

Mr Siddiqui believed the number of unclaimed bodies might have increased due to the floods in south Punjab and due to their large numbers some may have been placed on the roof owing to a lack of space. “Police hand over these bodies to the hospital after making efforts to identify them and search for the heirs,” he said.

The heirs of some would often claim unidentified bodies after months. “It has happened several times that the anatomy department had to return a body to heirs even after embalming and preserving it,” he recalled.

However, from what he saw in the videos circulating on social media that showed several bodies dumped in a closed room, he was of the opinion that the hospital had committed negligence and the practice was against the SOPs.

Published in Dawn, October 15th, 2022