One of the staff at the Goris Central Hospital (GCH), wishing to remain anonymous, recounted how he was forced to dispose of the corpse of a young child at the town garbage dump. The body was stuffed into a large plastic bag. The relatives of the dead child refused to take possession of the body. Due to renovations at the hospital the body had to be transferred elsewhere, where they didn’t have a proper internment site. However, even before renovations began, the Goris Hospital didn’t have a suitable site to bury so-called medical wastes. Surgeon Vidalik Khourshudyan, at the hospital’s H. Yolyan medical unit, says that body parts removed due to surgery that aren’t transferred to Yerevan for analysis are buried in a pit some 150 meters from the hospital’s administration building. The pit is periodically doused with chlorine for disinfection purposes. According to hospital staff, two such pits have been plugged-up during the past ten years and that a third is presently being dug. Body parts dissected at the morgue are also dumped in the pit since post-mortems for the town and surrounding villages and the preservation of bodies takes place at the GCH. Above the hospital wing where all this takes place is the maternity ward. Garnik Mirzoyan, Chief of the Pathology Diagnostic Department of GCH, says that dissections at the hospital take place in the basement, in two rooms measuring just 28 square meters. One of the rooms also serves as an office and changing room, while the other doubles as storage for equipment and medical supplies. Bodies already dissected are also stored there. Morgue lacks proper refrigeration storage units There are no refrigeration units at the morgue. Mr. Mirzoyan states that during the war years greater importance was given to having the basic necessary equipment with refrigeration units and that there were at least 7-8 rooms designated for diagnostic and anatomical analysis. Due to the lack of adequate facilities, most autopsies in the rural areas are performed at home. Mr. Khourshudyan says that nowadays many more people seek the services of the pathological-anatomical division, even though dissections are relevant from a hygienic point of view but also because they are mandatory when the deceased individual has received hospital treatment. He also argues that dissections are important in the training of future physicians. According to Garnik Mirzoyan, it isn’t only the hospital that must be concerned about the construction of a morgue meeting accepted standards. A solution to the problem falls within the parameters of the community authorities as well since the issue impacts on the town’s environmental well-being. “The structure can be an annex to the hospital and our staff can perform the services but it is an issue that relates to the community as a whole,” argues Mr. Mirzoyan. 50 million AMD needed for new morgue Goris city architect Karo Parsyan notes that initial plans for the construction of a 400 square meter building housing the diagnostic-anatomical unit estimate the cost to be around 50 million AMD. “Understandably, they can claim that we are in the midst of an economic crisis and that financing such a project is out of the question. However, the problem now is that all the buildings of the medical center are under renovation and, according to some sources, there are plans to locate the morgue in one of them. This solution does not meet the required standards and would merely serve as a temporary answer to the problem,” Mr. Parsyan says. According to a 2006 government decision, community authorities are obliged to conduct the management and regulation of existing cemeteries and map out areas for new ones. In addition, according to the law, the local authorities are required to monitor all funeral and internment services and even regulate the practices of stores and shops specializing in memorial services. The very same government decision, however, neglects the importance of having adequate morgues in urban areas at the very least. Within the framework of the above decision, the Goris City Council passed a set of decrees that would allow for the allocation of 6 square meters of land for burial sites at cemeteries at no charge. Additional fees would apply in other cases. Goris Mayor Nelson Voskanyan says, “A decision was passed at one of the council sessions to charge 3,000 AMD for each grave site at one of the new cemeteries. The council planned for these fees to go toward repairing the town’s three semi-covered and one open-air cemetery. But local residents balked at the idea. I still believe that the plan is a good one that will eventually catch on.” Mayor Voskanyan also reported that according to a 2007 City Council decision two hectares of land has been allocated for the expansion of the “Tos-kap” cemetery. He believes that with the cooperation of local police and district leaders it will be possible to see that local ordinances regulating funeral processions are observed. It is interesting to note that these same town authorities, particularly members of the city council, didn’t express a similar degree of intensity when the council reviewed the issue of having a suitable municipal morgue; perhaps it’s because the dead can’t vote. Granted, council members all spoke eloquently about the necessity of having a suitable morgue facility but, in the end, they decided to study the matter at greater length. Many argued that the hospital was already performing such services. No one saw fit to question the substandard conditions for such services or the need to improve them.