Kisumu County Government is set to dispose a total of 69 bodies lying in various mortuaries on Friday if families will fail to claim the bodies.
This comes barely a week after the county issued a 48-hour notice to all the mortuaries operating in the county to dispose all the bodies in their custody, failure to which they will move to court to have them removed and buried in mass graves as unclaimed bodies.
In a statement, Kisumu County Attorney and Legal Advisor Edris Omondi, says despite numerous notices, the bodies were still lying unclaimed and uncollected at various health facilities.
“The bodies are distributed within various health facilities as tabulated; Jaramogi Oginga Odinga Teaching and Referral Hospital has the highest number at 51 bodies, while the Kisumu County Hospital has 15 and Port Florence Community Hospital has two,” he said.
He added that aside from the 69 bodies, there are also 9 others whose relatives cannot be traced and have stayed in morgues without being collected.
Kisumu County Multi-Agency team enforced the following measures to stem the spread of the virus within the county.
Mortuaries which failed to obey the directive, they were to have their licenses cancelled.
“We have established that the prolonged stay of bodies in the mortuaries leads to abuse of Burial Protocols, eventually making it difficult to control the number of mourners attending such ceremonies,” stated the team.
Mortuaries are also under instructions not to accept bodies brought in from outside their premises, except for police cases and also file daily reports on the new bodies and related details.
