Why India's trainee doctors are hoping for more bodies

Logistical hurdles and cultural sensitivities are affecting the donation of cadavers, so medical students are forced to train on anatomical models or simulations, reports Namita Singh

- Namita Singh

When GN Saibaba, a university professor who had spent years in prison for his impassioned activism in India, died last month, his final act of service was an unexpected one: his body became a teaching tool, donated by his family to the Gandhi Medical College in Hyderabad for academic and research purposes.

Saibaba’s wife Vasantha and their daughter Manjira had only a short window in the hours after his death to consider whether to go ahead with the donation, and decided it would be a fitting send-off, embodying the late teacher’s lifelong belief in “education as a tool for liberation”.

His was one of the most high-profile body donations in recent memory in a country where such sacrifices are rare. The previous month, the family of the veteran Communist Party leader Sitaram Yechury also made national headlines for donating his body for teaching and research purposes.

The donations, while primarily intended to honour the legacies of the two public figures, have also cast a spotlight on a wider and growing problem in the world’s most populous nation: an acute shortage of cadavers for medical education and research.

For a country with one of the largest healthcare systems and a rising number of medical students, the supply of cadavers is alarmingly low, and the situation risks harming the quality of medical training, professionals and activists tell The Independent. The federal health ministry doesn’t keep a public database of body donations, but the seriousness of the problem can be gauged from an appeal it made to the health secretaries of states and union territories earlier this year.