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Increase in unclaimed bodies vex authorities
KATHMANDU, MAR 30 -
The number of unclaimed cadavers in hospitals and elsewhere has gone up, say authorities.
While such bodies have been reported in Pashupati area in huge numbers in the last one year, Tribhuvan University Teaching Hospital (TUTH) is having a hard time managing bodies that no one has claimed.
In the last nine months alone, police have recovered 64 corpses in the vicinity of Pashupatinath temple.
According to Yubraj Regmi, an accountant at Guthi Sansthan’s Pashupati Goshwara—which maintains records of unclaimed cadavers—54 bodies were found in the same period last year. They were later cremated.
Dr. Pramod Kumar Shrestha of TUTH Anatomy Department says, “Out of 1,245 bodies brought here for autopsy in the last nine months, more than 20 percent were unclaimed.” This means the hospital conducted autopsy on more than 200 unclaimed bodies.
The hospital, which boasts of the country’s biggest morgue, cannot keep these cadavers even for 35 days—the timeframe for which the hospital waits for someone to claim them—because it does not have enough refrigerators.
Some doctors at TUTH admit that several unclaimed bodies were buried without following due legal procedures. They cite instances in which the kin have arrived to collect the bodies after they were disposed.
Now, with the number of unidentified and unclaimed corpses growing, even Guthi Sansthan finds itself hard put, reeling as it is under fund crisis, to manage the bodies.
Guthi Sansthan, which had allocated Rs. 120,000 for the cremation of unclaimed bodies, is running out of cash.
Posted on: 2010-03-31 07:46
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