New PMC to lessen burden on hospitals

Mumbai’s western and northern suburbs will soon have a third post mortem centre (PMC) at the Siddharth Hospital, a facility which was long pending, lessening the burden on the two post mortem centres at Cooper Hospital and Bhagwati Hospital. The health minister Deepak Sawant took the decision at a recently held meeting and said the work should start at the earliest.

Dr S.M. Patil, police surgeon to the Maharashtra government, confirmed that the PM centre would start soon. The facility of conducting postmortems at Siddharth Hospital in Goregaon was long pending with the health and home department and will finally start operating within two months time.

As a stop-gap arrangement, doctors and staffers from PM centres at Cooper and Bhagwati hospitals will be made to work here and by May this year the health department is likely to sanction four doctors and support staff for the PM centre.

In 2015, as many as 2,200 odd post mortems were conducted at Bhagwati Hospital while around 1,520 odd post mortems were conducted at Cooper Hospital. While all the bodies from West Mumbai are taken to Cooper, bodies from north Mumbai are taken to Bhagwati Hospital. This also includes railway accidents.

For the past three years the four PM centres were facing a manpower crunch of doctors. The Asian Age highlighted the issue in 2013 and last year the health department had filled most of the posts.

Mumbai city and suburbs have four PMCs run by the state government.These are Sir JJ Hospital in south Mumbai, Rajawadi hospital in north Mumbai, Cooper hospital in west Mumbai and Bhagwati Hospital in north Mumbai. There are five more PM centres in the city.