More than 80 per cent of unclaimed bodies at Naivasha Subcounty hospital mortuary are collected by the police.
The bodies are either dumped in the area or collected from accident scenes.
This has overstretched services in the mortuary whose capacity is low forcing the management to incur extra expenses in disposing of the bodies after every three months.
This came as the hospital disposed of 15 unclaimed bodies from their mortuary which had not been collected for the last four months.
According to the superintendent in charge of the hospital Dr Angeline Ithondeka, the mortuary whose capacity is 18, is always full due to the high number of unclaimed bodies.
She said the process of disposing of the bodies was equally expensive as the number of unclaimed bodies continued to rise.
“In the past, some relatives were abandoning their relatives in the mortuary, but this has changed and the number of unclaimed bodies collected by police tops the list,” she said.
Ithondeka further said they were disposing of bodies every three months with the majority of those buried in mass grave being victims of accidents.
“We have seen a trend where the number of accidents tops the list, with the majority being men. We conduct this exercise after exhausting all the process of trying to identify them,” she said.
She said in the latest incident, the bodies were disposed of in a mass grave in the public cemetery in Longonot trading centre.
“This is the first time this year that we are disposing of bodies in mass grave and this has become the norm every three months,” she said.
Ithondeka at the same time said infrastructural works at the multi-million shilling Naivasha outpatient wing was now complete.
She said the facility, which has been constructed by Kengen and Nakuru county at a tune of Sh331 million, was awaiting supply of medical equipment from the national government.
“Works on the outpatient wing is complete and we are now working on the grounds as we wait for the medical supplies from the Ministry of Health,” she said.
Meanwhile, police are investigating some private hospitals in Naivasha for operating without valid licenses and for engaging in abortion.
Naivasha OCPD Samuel Waweru said they received complaints from medics and members of the public over the facilities.
“We have been informed of some clinics that are illegally operating within the town and they are involved in illegal activities,” he said.
(edited by Amol Awuor)
