This archive report was first published on 29 August 2019.
Published on August 29, 2019, Nairobi City Hall has issued an appeal to residents to come forward and identify over 90 unclaimed bodies lying at Mbagathi Hospital.
Nairobi County Health Executive Mohamed Dagane revealed that a total of 97 unclaimed bodies have been accumulating at the county hospital's mortuary for months, with some dating back to last year.
According to Dagane, the bodies started piling up at the morgue in 2018 when 70 were booked in and never claimed. Since the beginning of the year, another 27 have been booked, with 12 registered at the facility in April alone.
Out of the 97 bodies, 56 are males, while the rest are females. Dagane stated that the families of the departed will be given time to identify the bodies and pick them up, while those left behind will be disposed of in accordance with the Public Health Act.
He urged the public to collect the bodies of their loved ones to ensure total utilization of the mortuary.
City Hall raised a red flag over the high number of unclaimed bodies at the City Mortuary last month, but only half of the bodies were identified and collected after publishing the names.
Acting Nairobi County Secretary Leboo Morintat warned that failure to collect the bodies may lead to congestion at the facility as new bodies are brought to the morgue on a daily basis.
The hospital's health Administrative Officer Nelly Induli said that moving forward, the facility will do a monthly compilation of unclaimed bodies to avoid accumulation at the morgue.
