Autopsy facility unveiled at ESI hospital in Coimbatore

COIMBATORE: The Government Medical College and ESI Hospital in Coimbatore became the first ESI hospital in the country to start an autopsy facility in the premises. The facility started functioning from Thursday and received its first corpse on Saturday from the Sulur police station. Inaugurated in 2016, although the hospital at Singanallur in Coimbatore, which has a total of 31 departments, received the nod from State government for carrying out autopsies back in 2018, it got delayed as it took some time to form the medico-legal jurisdiction.

This becomes the second hospital to carry out postmortems in the district, after the Coimbatore Medical College Hospital (CMCH). Collector Dr GS Sameeran, along with the city police commissioner, superintendent of police, ESI hospital dean and other Health department officials held a meeting on the bifurcation of the jurisdiction to carry out postmortems and sent a proposal to the State government.

Based on the proposal, the State Public Health and Family welfare department passed a GO on July 18, 2022, allowing the hospital to conduct medico-legal autopsies jurisdiction-wise. The CMCH will handle postmortems from a total of eight police stations in the city and 16 stations across the district. Meanwhile, the ESI hospital will conduct autopsies from seven stations in the city and 19 across the district, including the East and South zones.

Dean of ESI Hospital, Dr Raveendran told TNIE, “Until now, the medical college students from across the district, including this hospital, had to visit the CMCH for attending classes on autopsy, but now, a lot of medical students will be benefitted from this facility. This will help the police department as well.” The dean added that while the CMCH has only two qualified doctors to perform postmortems, the ESI hospital has six doctors for the same.

Dr C Manoharan, Head of the Forensic Medicine Department at the ESI Hospital will lead the facility, which can handle around 10 post-mortem examinations per day. Currently, the facility has 18 freezer chambers to hold corpses and additionally 30 freezers are getting ready.