Naivasha Sub-county Hospital has  received a court order allowing it to dispose of 20 unclaimed bodies.

Following the move,  Superintendent in-charge of the hospital Dr Angeline Ithondeka, announced they  would be disposing the bodies in Longonot Public Cemetery after being preserved in the facility for over eight months.

“We have received a court order to dispose of 20 bodies that have remained unclaimed for months. We are now in the process of finishing this exercise,” she said.

Accident scenes

 Majority of the bodies were collected by police from accident scenes and have remained unclaimed forcing the hospital to seek court order to dispose them of. 

Ithondeka expressed concern over a new trend where families were abandoning bodies for hospitals to dispose them of. 

She  said the unbecoming behaviour was straining their budget and services as the mortuary had a capacity of 25 bodies and served nearby counties of Nyandarua, Narok and even parts of Kiambu.

Meanwhile, police have identified one of the unclaimed bodies as that of John Lungi Wamaitha, who hails from Ruiru in Kiambu.

The officers have called on relatives or friends who knew the deceased to visit the police station before the body was disposed of.

An unknown car along the Nairobi-Nakuru highway hit the deceased on March 20 and the body has been lying in the public mortuary since then.

“We collected his fingerprints and sent them to the registrar of persons who positively identified him,” said Naivasha OCPD Samuel Waweru.