Officials at the Princess Margaret Hospital’s (PMH) morgue are shedding light on some of the issues they are facing with the high volume of bodies brought into the facility including the victims of homicides.
Consultant and Forensic Pathologist, Dr. Caryn Sands spoke to the obligations of pathologists when dealing with murder victims. She said, “it takes a lot of time. There’s preparation for court and then there’s time on the stand. Obviously the homicides when we have to go to Supreme Court that is the other burden. Obviously its something that you want to do because you want to speak for the person who can’t speak for themselves.”
The morgue at PMH handles all of the bodies of citizens and visitors who die in the country outside of Grand Bahama. PMH Administrator, Mary Lightbourne-Walker admitted that the current morgue has become insufficient. “We’ve outgrown this and everyday it’s a fight for the person’s who work here. So if there’s anything that we can do I would say just try to get back on track to the plan that we did have where we had that national morgue with forensic capability and we would be able to deal with that growing demand pf this community, The Bahamas, which is growing. So it will then be able to meet not only our demands as a population but the tourist that come here as well.”
At the start of the year there were 295 bodies at the morgue. As of last Friday there were 235 bodies stored at the inside the morgue and outside in supplemental coolers.
