Kenya’s oldest hospital, the Kenyatta National Hospital (KNH), has recently announced its intention to dispose of the remains of 541 individuals, including 475 infants, if their relatives fail to claim them.
As the largest referral healthcare facility in East and Central Africa, KNH issued a public notice and released a list of the unclaimed bodies, stating that it will seek a court order to proceed with disposal after a seven-day deadline.
This is not the first time KNH has made such an announcement, as they previously set a one-week deadline for identifying and claiming deceased family members from their mortuary.
In October of last year, the hospital reported that 200 unclaimed bodies, mostly infants, were being held at a funeral home in the capital city of Nairobi.
While the KNH statement did not provide a specific reason for this decision, another health facility in Kenya, Machakos Level 5 Hospital, announced in January that it would limit the number of bodies brought to its morgues due to space constraints.
The hospital’s mortuary, with a capacity of only 24 bodies, has been overwhelmed with abandoned corpses. In the past, KNH has disposed of bodies following court orders, and health authorities in Kenya have attributed the situation to the high cost of hospital and mortuary fees.
