Nairobi County to dispose 236 unclaimed bodies from city morgues in seven days
The Nairobi County has appealed to members of the public to show up and identify bodies lying in the City Mortuary and Mama Lucy Kibaki Hospital mortuary before they are disposed of.
According to a published public notice, the bodies have overstayed in the two city morgues and the county will seek authority to get rid of them if uncollected in seven days.
According to a statement, there are 218 of the unclaimed bodies lying at the Nairobi City Mortuary while 18 are at the Mama Lucy Kibaki Hospital Mortuary from the date of admission awaiting collection.
The County Secretary and head of county Public Service Jairus Musumba said members of the public have seven days to identify and collect the bodies.
“Interested members of the public are asked to identify and collect the below-named bodies within seven days, failure to which the Nairobi City County will seek authority for disposal,” the notice added.
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“Pursuant to the Public Health Act Cap 242 [Subsidiary; public health (public mortuaries) rules, 1991] (2). Interested members of the public are asked to identify and collect the below-named bodies within 7 (seven) days, failure to which the Nairobi City County will seek authority for disposal,” read the notice.
The bodies were received in the morgues between March 2021 and March 2022, having been picked from different locations by police officers on patrol.
Last year, Nairobi Metropolitan Services (NMS) disposed of 119 bodies after the families failed to collect them. At the time, 105 unclaimed bodies were in City Mortuary.
On March 4, 2022, NMS issued a public notice on the planned disposal of unclaimed corpses that have been abandoned in city mortuaries between November 2020 and September 2021.
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At that time, that was a last call to interested persons to identify and collect 139 bodies lying at the City Mortuary and 52 others at Mama Lucy Kibaki Hospital mortuary.
Most of the corpses were marked as unknown and had been recovered by police without any form of identification documentation.
Then Nairobi County Director of Health Services Dr Ouma Oluga said the disposal of unclaimed bodies is a legal requirement and that the identification of unknown bodies is the work of the police.
According to the new list by released Musumba, some of the unclaimed bodies had identities by the time of collection while others did not, thus remain unknown.
The statement released also revealed that the causes of death for the deceased are road accidents, murder, drowning, shooting, natural death, sudden death and mob injustice. Few cases have been indicated to be those of natural death.
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