Daijiworld Media Network - Karkala (SP)

Karkala, May 18: In an incident which happened here on Monday May 17 ostensibly due to the negligence of the hospital staff, a hospital, instead of giving the body of a coronavirus-infected person, delivered another body.

A 44-year-old man of Sringeri origin was employed at Bengaluru. During his visit to the residence of his wife at Borkatte, Karkala, he suffered from coronavirus infection. He had been admitted into a private hospital in the outskirts of Mangaluru. However, he did not recover and breathed his last there.

Representational image

The body of a person from Hosabettu who had died at the said hospital was also lying nearby at the mortuary. The hospital staff wrongly handed over the body of the man from Hosabettu to the family from Karkala.

When the body was taken to Kariyakallu graveyard at Karkala for the funeral, the relatives noticed that the body had been exchanged. They sent the body back after which the hospital staff searched for the right body and then replaced it in place of the wrong one. The Karkala family made it doubly sure before cremating the body that it belonged to their own person.

In the meanwhile, relatives of the man from Hosabettu had visited the hospital's mortuary to collect the body but learnt that the body of their relative had been dispatched to Karkala. The relatives expressed grave concern about the faux pas of the hospital staff.