Autopsy of HIV infected man, who committed suicide, to be videographed

The Madras high court on Monday passed an interim order directing the Madurai Rajaji Government Hospital to videograph the autopsy of a HIV infected man who died after a suicide attempt.

The 19-year-old youth from Kamuthi in Ramanathapuram district was said to be distraught that his HIV infected blood had been transfused to a pregnant woman. The pregnant woman was diagnosed to be HIV positive while doctors say there are chances to save her unborn child from getting infected.

The youth apparently had informed the Sivakasi general hospital where he had earlier donated his blood about his discovery of being HIV positive. However by then the general hospital administration had sent the blood to Sattur general hospital in Virudhunagar district where it was transfused to the pregnant woman without testing.

On hearing of this, the youth apparently had consumed rat poison and was admitted to Madurai Rajaji general hospital on Wednesday last. While he was declared as dead on Sunday, his parents raised doubts on his death and filed a petition in the court to unearth the truth.

“Our son was responding well to the treatment until Friday. However, he turned ill after the doctors administered an injection. We have apprehensions that there is something wrong in our son’s death,” the deceased’s parents said in their petition.

Justice B Pugazhendhi, on Monday had ordered the Madurai Rajaji GH to conduct the autopsy under the supervision of two forensic experts and to video graph that.

However, when dean G Shanmugasundaram told the court that performing a postmortem on an HIV-infected person within 72 hours of death could infect the doctors, the judge asked that it be done with all medical norms and precautions undertaken but insisted that it be video graphed.

With the court direction, the autopsy will be carried out under the supervision of two forensic experts and will be video recorded. A subsequent report is also to be submitted to the court about the findings of the autopsy, a senior doctor with Madurai Rajaji GH told HT.