Five years mystery of arm in morgue

David Mbandi Sanguli [Photo:Pascal Mwandambo/Standard]

By Pascal Mwandabo

With a distant look in his eyes, David Mbandi Sanguli, 37, heaves a deep sigh and says ruefully: “I feel as if part of me is dead and lying in a mortuary. I am very depressed.”

He casts a cursory glance at his amputated right arm as he struggles to unfold  a hospital document from Wesu Hospital in Wundanyi.

The health institution requires Sanguli to pay over Sh500,000 to secure the release of his chopped hand which has been lying there for the last five years.

Sanguli, a resident of Mwatunge village in Mwatate, Taita -Taveta County, is akin to a man more sinned against than sinning, as Wiliam Shakespeare would have put it.

Sanguli, who used to work as a factory hand at a sisal farm in Mwatate, used to live a happy and fulfilling life with his wife and three children till fate one day turned his life upside down.

July 5, 2007 will remain forever etched in his memory.

“It was 3pm and I had just resumed the afternoon duties at the brush section of the factory. I had just removed several brush bundles from the machine when suddenly a lid from the machine snapped and trapped my hand as it continued rotating violently. The pain was excruciating.”

Hiring a lawyer

I let out a loud scream and my colleagues rushed to assist me. I was drenched in blood, my hand severed from the elbow by the machine,” Sanguli says he was taken to the clinic at the firm for minor treatment before he was transferred to Moi Hospital in Voi for more specialised treatment.

He says that one of his close friends informed the police in Wundanyi about the accident. The police went over and collected the arm and took it to Wesu Hospital for preservation pending investigations.

He says he stayed in Moi Hospital for two months only to be released into a very difficult world: he had lost his job and his right arm.

Not one to give up easily, Sanguli hired a lawyer and the matter ended up in court in Mombasa.

Rude shock

Meanwhile police had completed their investigations and Sanguli was allowed to visit the hospital to collect the chopped hand and dispose it.

A letter dated April 30, 2008 signed by the then OCS, a Mr Paul Odede, addressed to the hospital superintendent in Wesu reads : “Please may you allow the chopped hand to be taken by the relatives for disposal. We have completed our investigations after it was photographed by the scene of crime personnel.”

However, Sanguli got a rude shock on visiting the hospital when he was slapped with a bill of Sh106,000 being the cost of preserving the chopped limb.

“At first I thought it was a joke but after studying the document keenly, I realised they meant business,” he says sullenly.

But there was a glimmer of hope in 2009 when the high court in Mombasa ruled that the sisal firm pays him compensation of Sh 1.4 m.

However, his lawyer took Sh900,000 leaving him with Sh 500,000.

A source at Wesu Hospital says of the demand for payment: “When a human part is stored at the hospital we charge for its preservation.”