The staff of Gandhi Hospital and the police are in a tizzy as the body of the corona patient who succumbed has gone missing from the morgue.
On June 9, Rasheed Alikhan, a resident of Asifnagar, was admitted to the Gandhi Hospital after testing positive for coronavirus. The next day (on June 10), he passed away in the hospital while undergoing treatment. When the relatives went to Gandhi Hospital to take the body of the deceased, to their utter shock and disbelief, they were told that the body was missing from the mortuary.
After learning that the body was missing, the family of the deceased approached the police who lodged a complaint. The relatives of the deceased bemoaned that the hospital management have not updated them about the body.
This is not the first incident of a body missing from Gandhi Hospital mortuary.
Earlier, the body of a resident of Vanstalipuram who succumbed to Covid-19 went missing. 42-year-old Madhusudan was admitted with coronavirus symptoms and was tested positive on April 30. He succumbed to the virus on May 1. When Madhusudan’s wife A Madhavi went to claim the body, she was shocked after being informed about the news of the death and cremation of her husband. Madhavi had tweeted to Telangana IT Minister K T Rama Rao saying that her husband, who was being treated at the Gandhi Hospital with COVID-19, has gone missing. Responding to Madhavi’s tweet to KTR, Dr M Rajarao, the superintendent of Gandhi Hospital, retweeted her saying her husband was cremated after he succumbed to the COVID-19 infection.
Nothing seems to be going right in Gandhi Hospital – missing bodies in the hospital, junior doctors on strike, increasing attacks on medical staff and lack of adequate medical equipment.
The hospital is teeming with corona positive patients as infection cases are on the surge in Telangana even as doctors are working over-time treating patients. The hospital has already reached its full capacity with 100 patients admitted last Friday and 200 on Saturday. Around 805 new Covid-19 cases were admitted in the hospital in the last 10 days.
The pandemic is wreaking havoc by increasing the pressure on an already overstretched healthcare system. Junior doctors are on strike over growing physical assault against the medical staff demanding that the government provide Special Police Protection.
Recently, 33-year-old TV5 crime reporter Manoj who had tested positive for the coronavirus a few days back had succumbed while undergoing treatment at the hospital. Manoj recorded the facilities or the lack of it in Gandhi Hospital while he was undergoing treatment. These visuals went viral and created a flutter in social media over the treatment facilities in the hospital. Manoj’s sensational revelation has exposed the shallowness of medical facilities in Gandhi Hospital. “The hospital has failed to provide oxygen. Doctors and paramedic staff are not properly and adequately attending to corona patients. The facilities even in ICU leaves much to be desired,” these were the last words of Manoj before he had succumbed to Covid.
It happens now and then like corona comes and go.