KARACHI: Karachi’s historical Essa Nagri graveyard previously known as Country Club Qabristan during British Rule has allotted a vast area to hospitals or people to bury human organs or body parts discarded after getting infected of any disease in the orthopedic wards in city hospitals. These portions where human body parts (feet, fingers, legs, hands and others) are buried have no tomb, stone or graves. It is a simple plain ground.
Anwer Kazmi of Edhi Foundation while talking to News Lens Pakistan in his office said, “Not Essa Nagri graveyard alone but there are countless other graveyards where human body parts are buried. Edhi Foundation daily receives calls from both public and private hospitals for collection of human organs and parts for burial in different graveyards removed during operation as they are infected.”
Kazmi further added while talking to News Lens Pakistan, “These organs belong to Muslim patients and hence believed that they should be buried than burnt.” Technically, the infected human body parts removed during surgeries should be incinerated (a process in which infected waste is burnt in a safe way). “Muslim patients think that incineration is burning, which is a Hindu way to treat a human body part, therefore they insist to bury the removed parts instead of burning,” added Kazmi while talking to News Lens Pakistan.
Sultan Ahmed, Kotri district Jamshoro Sindh resident broke his arm after falling from a tree .He went to a local fake doctor in his hometown who tied his arm tightly which got infected. When he reached Karachi civil hospital doctors recommended an operation to remove his arm. After the operation, his brother Subhan Ahmed took his arm for burial to Edhi volunteers in a graveyard he doesn’t remember.
Subhan Ahmed told news Lens Pakistan, “We heard that after removing the arm hospital will burn it so I went to bury it.”
Due to increased demand from the patients’ relatives many hospitals in Karachi have now made arrangements for the burial of such body parts in local graveyards. Agha Khan Hospital Karachi has acquired a portion in a local graveyard where hospital staff brings human body parts every day and buries them in the ‘organ graveyard’ with the help of the graveyard administration.
AKUH Facilities Management Director Hakim Ali Khan while talking to News Lens Pakistan said, “Most of the patients demand that the removed infected body parts operated in AKUH must be buried, therefore we have acquired a piece of land in local graveyard where these parts are taken on daily basis for burial.”
