Medical course, corpse and constraints

November 30, 2002
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KATHMANDU: The 11 medical colleges in the country need of more than 100 dead bodies every year. The bodies are needed in their study of basic science in the first and the second year.

Apart from the Institute of Medicine under Tribhuvan University, all the other colleges are private colleges with at least 100 students, and they need at least one body for every 10 students.

There were several difficulties in getting corpses in the past. The religious and cultural barrier, where the deads are compulsorily cremated made it difficult to find bodies for medical studies.

Unidentified and unclaimed corpses are permitted for medical use in Nepal. The Police Act 2012 has provisions that any unclaimed body could be given to the medical colleges for medical studies although there were no medical colleges at that time.

With the establishment of the medical college, the Institute of Medicine under Tribhuvan University, in 1984, the unclaimed corpses were given to it. When several medical colleges were established after 1994, the demand for corpses increased. But there has been no much difficulty in finding bodies for the studies.

“The act has made it easier in getting the corpses for medical studies,” said principal of the Kathmandu Medical College Hemang Dixit.

There has been a change in the attitude of the people. “The number of people handing over the dead bodies of their relatives to the medical colleges has been increasing,” said Dixit.

But such number is too small to meet the demand and the colleges still have to depend on unclaimed bodies.

With the demands growing, the process of the medical colleges receiving bodies has also been simplified. Earlier, the medical colleges have to write to the Home Ministry, which would refer to the police, which in turn would write to the Institute of Medicine before the bodies are supplied to them.

Now, the bodies are supplied directly to the colleges. The Institute of Medicine under Tribhuvan University supplies bodies to the private medical colleges in the central region. The responsibility for the western region has been given to Manipal College of Medical Sciences in Pokhara and in the eastern region it is the B.P. Koirala Institute of Health Sciences.

Dadi Ram Karki, an official at the anatomy department of the Nepal Medical College, said the bodies should not be deformed or with major injuries. “Such bodies are not suitable for studies,” says Karki.

Officials at the IOM source said that the number of corpses made available to the Institute differs each year, but they have been able to meet the demand of the private colleges and the IOM itself. Students at the NMC say that they have faced no shortage of the dead bodies.

The Nepal Medical College and Kathmandu Medical College say they pay Rs. 25,000 for one dead body. According to Dhurba Bahadur Basnyat, chief administrator of the Nepal Medical College the college bought six corpses last year and they had four bodies of the previous year.

The dead bodies are used for the study of anatomy, surgery practices, physiology, and for forensic and other studies. The corpses should be kept in ice for 35 days after postmortem before they are used for medical studies.

A dead body can be preserved up to two to three years before it can be used for studies.

The same body is used for the study of different parts at different times. Once the study of soft tissues is finished, the skeleton is taken out and used for anatomical studies. To take out the skeleton, a dead body should be kept in ice for more than six months. This makes all the soft tissues to drop off, and the bones remain. The bones are, then, taken out and kept in the museum for skeletal study.

An official at the IOM said Nepal had imported two dead bodies from India for medical studies in 1979. Since then Nepal has not imported any dead body.