It is not right for hospitals to detain dead bodies over bills

Stephen Njoroge, father to the late Brian Kimani, 13, who died from cancer of the blood (Leukemia) at Gertude's Hospital. [Jenipher Wachie/Standard]

In most communities, burying a person is the climax of celebrating the life of a loved one and it is every family’s wish to give their kin a befitting send-off.

It is doubly painful when a family is denied the opportunity to bury their loved one as happened in the case of 13-year-old Brian Kimani, whose family held a memorial service without his body after it was detained by Gertrude Children’s Hospital over a Sh14 million bill.

This raises the moral question of whether hospitals are justified to hold patients’ bodies until their bills are settled, and whether there is any value gained by keeping a corpse in cold storage for days on end.

An English judge once ruled that a creditor is not entitled to retain the body of his debtor as security. But does a hospital have a right to be paid for services it rendered to the patient before death? And does a family have a right to bury the body?

In an attempt to resolve this dilemma, several judges have ruled that it is wrong for a hospital to detain a corpse over medical bills since there are other avenues through which they can pursue their dues.

Justice Joseph Sergon, while ordering Karen Hospital and Montezuma Monalisa funeral home to release the body of a man detained for six months over a Sh17 million medical bill, said it did not make sense to detain a corpse “because there is no property in a dead body to recover a debt”.

According to the judge, a hospital does not lose the right to file recovery proceedings against relatives of the deceased patient, who signed the admission form to settle the bill.

Justice Wilfrida Okwany made it clearer in another ruling that there is no law that provides that failure to settle a bill will result in a patient’s detention.

Civil suit

She said although hospitals have a right to demand payment for services, holding the patient is not one of the avenues they should pursue because payment can be pursued through other debt-recovery mechanisms like filing a civil suit.

In the judges’ words, detaining a patient or body is a classic example of a scenario where two wrongs don’t make a right.

If losing a loved one is not painful enough, then trying to cope with the loss while knowing that the person you cherished is lying lifeless in a cold room because you are unable to collect the body is a traumatising experience.

Many families would wish to bury their kin as soon as possible to ease the pain and start the healing process. Keeping the body in a mortuary over unpaid bills is extreme psychological torture.

It is not the dead person who will settle the debt. It is the relatives. Hospitals should reach a consent with relatives on how debts will be paid and release the body for burial.