Indira Gandhi Memorial Hospital (IGMH) has been granted land from the Hulhumale' Cemetery to set up a facility to conduct post mortems in-country.
Male' City Group of Hospitals (MCGH) CEO Ibrahim Haleem said that post mortems necessary in various death investigations will be conducted by police through the Homeland Security Ministry and IGMH.
Haleem said that the HDC had informed that a land for the facility has now been assigned from the Hulhumale' Cemetery plot.
Post mortems are conducted by pathologists. At present, the only trained pathologist in the country is Dr Hassan Umar, who works in the Forensics department at Maldives Police Service.
Haleem said that the post mortem centre would be equipped with the necessary equipment required to conduct various scans as well.
"Design and drawings for the centre are now almost completed. The facility is not solely focused on post mortems alone, it will have all the resources necessary for investigations of deaths. Not just to dissect a body. The CT scans and other scans that need to be done before that will also be made possible there," Haleem said.
"Every person whose death requires a post mortem or autopsy may not necessarily be in the best condition. Circumstances will change in every situation. There are some who die of burns... in such situations, scans and diagnostics can be conducted there without the need to bring the body into the hospital. We are setting up the resources to identify the cause of death through those scans and autopsy at the facility itself," Haleem said.
Currently, bodies of the deceased are sent abroad, generally to India, in cases where a post mortem is deemed necessary as the service is not available in-country.
In a parliament sitting last month, Health Minister Geela Ali revealed that over the past ten years, 23 bodies of deceased individuals have been sent abroad for autopsies. Each of these procedures cost a minimum of MVR 55,000, bringing the total to approximately MVR 1.2 million.
