• Josephine Kibaru-Mbae said 105 bodies were at City Mortuary, 11 at Mama Lucy Funeral Home and three at Mbagathi Hospital Funeral Home.
• All the bodies accumulated from May last year up to October.
The Nairobi Metropolitan Services has urged members of the public to identify and collect 119 unclaimed bodies at various city morgues or they be disposed of.
In a public notice dated March 17, 2021, NMS health secretary Dr Josephine Kibaru-Mbae said 105 bodies were at City Mortuary, 11 at Mama Lucy Funeral Home and three at Mbagathi Hospital Funeral Home.
All the bodies accumulated from May last year up to October.
At City Mortuary, 20 bodies have been identified and 62 have had their cause of death known.
Seventeen deaths were sudden, 10 drowned, seven accidents, while seven died due to natural causes.
Seven were murdered, five died due to mob justice, four committed suicide, two from incidents while one died as a result of fire and one from shooting.
Relatives of all the 11 bodies at Mama Lucy cannot be traced.
City Mortuary has a storage capacity of 160 bodies whereas Mbagathi has 120. This means if the bodies are left to pile up, the cold rooms become overstretched.
This is the third time NMS is appealing to the public to collect the dead bodies.
The first public notice was in July where 151 unclaimed bodies were at the city morgues and in November after the number increased to 188.
Cap 242 of the Public Health Act says an unclaimed body should be removed from a mortuary within two weeks or else it is disposed of in a mass grave after public officers obtain the court's permission.
The county is supposed to issue a 21-day notice and thereafter bury the bodies in a mass grave
In 2006, Kenya's two main public mortuaries (City Mortuary and Kenyatta National Hospital mortuary) lost millions in uncollected revenue from unclaimed bodies.
In about five months, City Mortuary and Kenyatta National Hospital mortuary disposed of over 1,500 unclaimed bodies, losing about Sh5 million.