Dishonouring the dead

As if the humiliation and suffering that common people experience in their everyday lives is not enough, now even hospitals are showing a complete disregard to basic human decency while dealing with the dead. After multiple – some have said 500, others 200 – unidentified and decomposed human bodies were found on the roof of Nishtar Hospital, Multan on Friday, an inquiry was initiated by the Punjab government and some members of the hospital and police officers found guilty. The visuals that have been circulating on mainstream and social media are extremely disturbing. This is not a simple case of violating medical ethics, something that is already in short supply in the country. It appears that there was no standard operating procedure (SOP) in place or even if there was, the relevant staff never followed them.

Ultimately it is the government of Punjab and its health ministry that should be accountable and they must not just confine themselves to holding an inquiry into this incident. It is inhuman to treat the dead like this, apart from being unethical and in violation of the SOPs that all hospitals must follow while dealing with the dead. Though the Nishtar Medical University’s vice chancellor has constituted a three-member committee to investigate the matter, one would hope an independent committee with experts and professionals from outside the location of the incident would look into the matter. The explanation from the head of the anatomy department at Nishtar was even more irresponsible as she tried to explain how the hospital treated unidentified and unclaimed bodies for educational purposes. She has also blamed the police and said the Edhi Foundation did not take the bodies for burial, but was unable to answer why nobody noticed that the bodies were rotting away on the rooftop. Faisal Edhi has clarified that the police hand over the bodies to the Edhi Foundation and not the hospital. He has also said that they did not refuse Nishtar Hospital as alleged.

The question is why these bodies were not properly buried if they were putrefying. For medical teaching purposes now there are state-of-the-art methods the world over, with computer-generated images and three-dimensional presentations of bodies. For dead bodies, embalming and preservation is the best method for future use and that also seems to be lacking in our hospitals and institutions. Nishtar Hospital is just one incident but had there been no whistleblower, this wouldn’t have come to light. We hope that no other hospital keeps bodies on rooftops or in basements – hoping to ‘teach’ students. All provincial governments must ensure that when unidentified bodies are handed over to teaching hospitals, they are given the respect the dead deserve.