The alleged disregard for two destitute dead bodies in the controversial 'ward nine' of General Hospital kicked up a major controversy on Saturday.
The charge was that one body was mishandled and another neglected for a long time. The General Hospital superintendent ordered the suspension of two female attenders in the wake of the incident.
The alleged mishandling took place when two female attenders took the body of a man named Gopi in a trolley from Ward 9 to the mortuary along one of the internal roads. On the way, the trolley fell on a gutter and tipped to the side dumping the body on the ground. The attenders, with the help of onlookers, placed the body back on the trolley. The other charge was that no one had attended to another dead body, of an 80-year-old woman named Lakshmikuttyamma, kept on a concrete bench for an inordinately long time.
“The first charge was taken seriously and the two attenders were suspended,” said the district medical officer, Dr Peethambaran. “The second is misinformation. A dead body can be removed only after a duty doctor examines the body and certifies the death,” the DMO said.
The additional district magistrate, Mr Vinod, ordered the cleaning up of the ward and the distribution of clean mattresses for in-patients in the Ward. “I found that there were 83 patients in the ward meant for only 40 patients,” he said. The road on which the trolley tripped had not been maintained for a long time.