Pathologist Laments Lack Of Space In Hospital Mortuary

A Consultant Pathologist at Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu University Teaching Hospital (COOUTH), Amaku, Awka, Dr Chukwudi Okani has lamented the sudden increase in the number of dead bodies being deposited in the hospital’s mortuary.
Okani, who is the head Department of Pathology in COOUTH told newsmen in Awka that there was virtually no vacancy in the teaching hospital’s mortuary due to the abnormal surge.
“Over the last two months, I have noticed an increase in the rate and number of deaths, many dead bodies are being brought to the mortuary, in our mortuary now, there are no spaces left that we can park dead people.
“Under normal circumstance, the rate at which people deposit dead bodies in the hospital is equal to the rate at which they take them for burial but now the rate at which bodies are being deposited in the mortuary far surpasses the rate of claims.
“Everything is happening within a short time just these periods that doctors went on strike.
“They now smuggle bodies in unusual places and that means that there is no vacancy any where in our mortuary, this type of thing has never happened since I joined this institution,” he said.
Okani said the problem might not be unconnected to the crisis in the Anambra health sector where doctors had been embarking on one form of industrial action or the other.
The Association of Resident Doctors (ARD) in the state-owned COOUTH been on indefinite strike since May 13, while the Conference of Civil Service Doctors are presently on a week warning strike.
Medical and Dental Consultants Association of Nigeria (MDCAN), recently ended its one week warning strike and has threatened to commence indefinite shutdown before the end of June.
The consultant urged Anambra government to take urgent steps to resolve the impasse with doctors and stem the ugly tide as autopsies he performed on some of the dead bodies showed that some of them died of preventable deaths.
He described the health sector as “very delicate” where government should not allow breakdown at a point in the service delivery chain, adding that it often resulted in catastrophic end.
“Patients don’t just need specialists’ care to be alive, everybody is important in the hospital, the Consultants, the Resident Doctors even the House Officers, the Pharmacist, Laboratory Scientists are all equally important”