600 autopsies in South Goa district hospital in 2022

Margao: If bodies piled one over the other in the cabinets of the morgue owing to space crunch was an all too common situation at the old Hospicio hospital, Margao, frequent breakdowns of storage cabinets leading to decomposition of bodies, and staff shortage in the forensic department necessitating shifting of bodies to Goa Medical College for post mortem, were the other major issues the premier hospital was saddled with – until a year ago that is.
All these issues became a thing of the past when the forensic department was shifted to the new South Goa District Hospital, Margao, in December 2021.
The hospital’s morgue has a storage capacity of 72 bodies, four times more than what the old Hospicio hospital had.
“We are now in a position to conduct three autopsies simultaneously,” Dr Madhu Ghodkirekar, associate professor, forensic medicine, and in-charge of the mortuary complex, said.
By conducting nearly 600 postmortem examinations in the last calendar year, the hospital has thus handled nearly a fourth of the bodies of medical legal cases in the state.
“What stands out from the facts and figures,” Ghodkirekar says, “is the 73 sudden death cases, most of which were of people below 50 years. Such cases have risen sharply in the post-Covid period and that’s a cause of concern. We have had cases of young people dying of severe heart attacks and brain hemorrhage.”