KNH gives families seven days to claim 480 bodies or risk disposal

Kenyatta National Hospital (KNH) emergency area where critical patients are received for medical care response June 11, 2025 [David Gichuru,Standard]

Kenyatta National Hospital (KNH) will dispose of 480 bodies if  families fail to identify and claim them within seven days.

In a notice published in Tuesday's newspapers, KNH said it will seek a court order authorising the process under the Public Health Act.

The bodies, lying at the hospital's Farewell Home since as far back as January 2024, include 102 adults and 378 children.

"Kenyatta National Hospital is in possession of a number of unclaimed bodies at its Farewell Home. Pursuant to the Public Health Act Cap 242, interested members of the public are requested to identify and collect the bodies within seven days, failing which the hospital will seek court authority to dispose of them," the hospital said.

It is not the first time KNH has issued such a notice.

In 2024, the hospital announced plans to dispose of more than 500 unclaimed bodies, most of them children, after families failed to respond to earlier public appeals. Similar cases have been reported at public hospitals across the country.

The situation reflects a persistent challenge facing Kenya's public morgues, where hundreds of bodies go unclaimed each year due to financial hardship, lack of identification, and other social factors that prevent families from collecting their loved ones.

Under the Public Health Act, bodies should not remain in a public mortuary beyond 10 days without burial arrangements being made. If a body remains unclaimed for 21 days, a hospital may apply for court permission to dispose of it, but only after issuing a public notice.

Health officials say the growing backlog of unclaimed bodies is straining already limited mortuary space in public hospitals, sometimes forcing institutions to conduct mass burials to free up capacity.

Poverty and high hospital bills are frequently cited as the primary drivers of the problem. In many cases, families are either unaware of a death or unable to raise the funds needed for burial. Others are unable to collect bodies until outstanding medical bills are settled, a practice that has drawn sharp criticism.

The issue has made its way to Parliament, where Kirinyaga Women Representative Njeri Maina has introduced a bill seeking to bar hospitals from withholding bodies over unpaid bills and to guarantee access to emergency medical services without upfront payment.

Maina said the proposal was born out of the suffering of families unable to retrieve the bodies of loved ones they cannot afford to bury.

"The rationale that the courts have given is that even if you detain a dead body for 10 or 20 years, you are never going to sell it for monetary value," she said.

She added that the emotional toll on affected families was immense, with some waiting months or even years for release of remains.

"When a family has borrowed money just to travel to the hospital to beg for the release of their loved one so they can bury them, it must speak to our humanity," Maina said.

Beyond the human cost, the crisis carries public health implications. Prolonged storage of remains places pressure on mortuary infrastructure and resources, pressure that officials warn will only grow unless systemic issues around healthcare costs and poverty are addressed.