KATHMANDU: The International Committee of Red Cross on Friday  handed over a mortuary refrigerator unit to the Department of Forensic Medicine under the Institute of Medicine, Tribhuvan University Teaching Hospital.

At present, the DoFM has only one mortuary refrigerator unit with the capacity to store up to 20 bodies, whereas the mortuary refrigerator unit gifted by ICRC has the capacity to store up to 28 bodies. With this, the DoFM will be able to store up to 48 bodies at a time.

The two cold rooms of international standards are also under construction with the initiative of ICRC with support from the Japanese Red Cross Society for storing about 200 bodies in the DoFM during the times of national disaster and war.

Devendra Dhungana, Communication Officer at ICRC, said, “The establishment of cold rooms will help the facility to manage bodies. Now, more bodies of the accident and murder victims, abroad employees and disaster victims will be preserved and handed over to the relatives for funeral rites after their identification process.”

He added that, bodies of persons killed by criminals and suicide cases have to be stored in the cold rooms for post-mortem as per the existing laws to help police carry out further investigation to identify the deceased.

The old mortuary refrigerator unit of the hospital is not functioning well and is limited to store the bodies during the massive disaster and wars. Dr Pramod Kumar Shrestha, Head of the DoFM, said management of bodies of the quake victims became a huge challenge after the April 25 due to limited capacity.