City businessman?s body donated for medical use

SETTING A precedent, the body of a 57-year-old businessman who died early on Tuesday morning, was donated to the MGM Medical College by his family to honour his last wish.

SETTING A precedent, the body of a 57-year-old businessman who died early on Tuesday morning, was donated to the MGM Medical College by his family to honour his last wish.

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Akhilesh Vyas had nearly three years ago filled a form at the MGM Medical College’s Anatomy Department expressing a wish to donate his eyes and body after his death.

Complying with the deceased’s wishes, his wife, son and other family members donated the body for furthering the cause of medical education.

Akhilesh was suffering from diabetes and heart problem. He was being taken to a private hospital in the wee hours on Tuesday when he breathed his last.

Though the body was taken to MY Hospital, lack of coordination between the departments concerned compelled the family members to run from pillar to post.

“There was some lack of coordination on our side but the family was also ignorant of laws. We are bound by law and cannot do things just like that,” head of Anatomy department, MGM Medical College, Dr Sudha Shrivastava said. To start with, the family did not have a death certificate without which the Anatomy Department could not initiate the process of accepting the body.

Secondly, if the deceased had wanted to donate eyes then the general procedure calls for donating them at the hospital where the patient dies and thereafter handing over the body.

“Here again, they brought the body directly to the hospital and wanted to rush through all the procedures including expecting us to remove the eyes,” Dr Shrivastava said.

Ultimately, college ophthalmologist Dr Tulika was summoned to remove the eyes after which the body was formally handed over to Anatomy Department.

“We then inject preservatives (formalin, glycerene and common salt) in the body so that it could be used by the medical students for dissection for nearly a year,” he added.

Number of bodies for dissection dwindling
ACCORDING TO the Medical Council of India (MCI) norms, a medical college with facilities such as the MGM Medical College must be able to provide at least 10 cadavers/bodies for dissection to the students of anatomy. However, over the years the number has drastically come down with the MGM Medical College getting hardly three-four bodies annually.

“The number of colleges has increased so whatever unclaimed bodies are available are distributed among all of them. Secondly, now a days there are these socio-religious organisations that come forward to carry out the last rites of unclaimed bodies. This, too, has led to the shortage,” Dr Shrivastava said.

The college registers the names of those keen to donate their bodies for educational purpose. However, the number of bodies actually reaching the college is dwindling. “A reason for this is migration. For instance, a person in 50s fills up a form to donate his body but after retirement, he settles down with his son at another place. Naturally, his body would be the property of the medical college in that area,” the professor of Anatomy said.

Study of Anatomy forms the very foundation of medical education. If students do not get proper exposure at the right time, it would be an incomplete education leading to possible mishandling of cases in future. The department has organised several programmes to increase awareness among the masses. But owing to strained resources, it has not been possible to reach out to more and more people, Dr Shrivastava added.