The service nobody wants to need

Sindh runs a free mortuary van service. You request it on 1122, the same number as an ambulance. This is the plain version: what the service covers, what it costs, and what to ask when you call.

If you have come here in the middle of something, that card is the whole answer. The rest of this page is for the questions that come after it.

01

What the mortuary van service is

In April 2023, the Sindh Health Department launched a dedicated fleet of mortuary vans. Sindh Integrated Emergency and Health Services runs them. Health Minister Dr Azra Fazal Pechuho inaugurated the service in Karachi, alongside Health Secretary Zulfiqar Shah and Parliamentary Secretary Qasim Siraj Soomro. Officials called it the first service of its kind in the province.

02

What it costs

Nothing, for families who cannot arrange private transport themselves. That is how the service was announced: free of charge, after verification. You reach it on 1122, the same helpline SIEHS uses for its free 1122 ambulance service. Dr Pechuho said at the launch that the vans would run on exactly the same system as the 1122 ambulance.

03

Why it exists as a separate fleet

Because before it existed, the job fell to the ambulances. Coverage of the launch described emergency ambulances being used to move bodies, which tied up a vehicle meant for someone still alive. Separating the two fleets was, in the health minister’s framing, a question of efficiency. That separation is the point: a request for a mortuary van does not draw on the ambulance fleet.

04

Who it covers, and how far it goes

This is where we have to be precise, because the published record stops at the launch and has not been formally updated since. As announced in April 2023, the service ran on these terms:

• • First come, first served. Vans are dispatched in the order requests arrive.
• • Intended for families who cannot afford private transport, subject to verification.
• • Pickup from hospitals. At launch the vans collected from health facilities.
• • Within the district, initially. SIEHS said it would consider inter-district requests after verification, subject to vehicle availability.
• • Destination: home or graveyard.

Those are the announced terms, not a promise about what a dispatcher can do for you on a given night. Fleets grow. Standard operating procedures get revised. A service in its fourth year rarely matches its own press release. We are not going to guess at the current version in writing. Call and ask.

05

How to request a mortuary van, and what to ask

A call made at this moment is not a call anyone rehearses. These are the things worth having ready, and the things worth asking.

Nobody should be finding out the answer to that fifth question in a hospital corridor. Ask it on the phone.

06

Dignity is not a separate department

We usually measure emergency medicine on the part where someone survives. But the last stretch belongs to the same system. It runs from a hospital trolley to a home, in the hours when a family can least afford to argue over a fare. That stretch leaves the longest mark.

A van that arrives, that is clean, that is free, and that does not require a family to bargain over a body, is not a soft addition to emergency care. It is the same work, at the end of it.

That is also why the service is worth writing down plainly. A family searching for this at two in the morning should not have to read anything longer than the card at the top of this page. If you need medical advice rather than transport, SIEHS also runs Tele-Tabeeb 1123.