Impact of Lockdown on Unnatural Deaths at a Tertiary Care Hospital, Kolkata Nadeem S1, Dutta SS2,*, Banerjee M3, Chattopadhyay S4, Sarkar R5 1Junior Residents, Department of Forensic Medicine and Toxicology, N.R.S. Medical College, Kolkata 2Associate Professor, Department of Forensic Medicine and Toxicology, N.R.S. Medical College, Kolkata 3Demonstrator, Department of Forensic Medicine and Toxicology, N.R.S. Medical College, Kolkata 4Professor, Department of Forensic Medicine and Toxicology, N.R.S. Medical College, Kolkata 5Junior Residents, Department of Forensic Medicine and Toxicology, N.R.S. Medical College, Kolkata *Corresponding Author, Dr. Sayak Sovan Dutta, Email : dr.sayaksovan@gmail.com, Mobile No.: +91 88205 69779
Online Published on 26 July, 2024. Abstract Unnatural deaths to a large extent are a curse to modern society. This research investigates trends of unnatural deaths reported to NRS Medical College Kolkata from November 2019 to January 2021. It was a retrospective descriptive study on 4403 postmortems carried out during the study period. The study period was categorized into pre-lockdown (November 2019-March2020), lockdown (April 2020-August 2020) and post-lockdown (September 2020-January 2021) phases with each phase for 5 months. Our findings have been presented with respect to age, gender, cause and manner of death. Out of 4403 autopsies, 2389 were unnatural deaths and the rest were due to natural causes. Besides, among 2389 unnatural deaths 874 were reported in the pre-lockdown phase, 484 in lockdown and 1031 in post-lockdown phases respectively. Railway incidents were most common in pre-lockdown (33.06%) and post-lockdown (27.8%) whereas hanging was the most common type of unnatural death in the lockdown phase (20.04%). Unnatural deaths that solely occur outdoors decreased during the lockdown while all other types increased during the lockdown phase. Hence, this study is determining the trends of all types of unnatural deaths reported at NRSMCH Kolkata during the study period and the improvement in public health can lower the unnatural death to a large exten. Top Keywords Unnatural deaths, Hanging, Poisoning, Accidents, Lockdown. Top |