A patient at Ludhiana Civil Hospital shares a bed alongside a corpse

Once again, the local civil hospital is in the headlines for all the wrong reasons. For almost thirty minutes, a patient who was brought to the emergency room had to share a bed with a corpse.

At 11.40 am, an unnamed patient passed away, and for the next 37 minutes, his corpse lay on the bed he shared with another patient. At 12:17 p.m., the corpse was moved to the morgue.

Sakshi Sawhney, the deputy commissioner for Ludhiana, duly noted the occurrence and started an investigation. The investigation’s civil surgeon, Dr. Jasbir Singh Aulakh, delivered a report to the director of health and the DC.

Senior Medical Officer Dr. Mandeep Sidhu and Emergency Medical Officer Dr. Manju Nahar were indicted by the Civil Surgeon, who claimed that the event occurred as a result of an administrative error on the side of the SMO.

Dr. Aulakh said, “If two patients were sharing a bed because there weren’t enough beds, then the other patient should have been moved after one died and spared him the mental anguish.”

It was previously reported that the patient had spent two hours lying next to the body. It was discovered that the body had been in the ward for 37 minutes after the claims were confirmed. The administrative procedures involved in moving the remains caused the delay, he claimed.

The tragedy has once again highlighted the hospital’s dire situation. The hospital hospitalized the unnamed patient on April 9 at 8:30 p.m. with a shattered thigh bone, but no doctor saw him until April 11. “Patient not on the bed” was written in a notation on April 12 in his file. How does one get out of bed when their thigh is broken? A note was made on April 13 by a doctor, however, the note did not include the doctor’s name. The patient was sent to a different hospital on April 14, but once again, the doctor’s name was omitted.