Drama as Kiambu mortuary recalls bodies after mix-up

Drama unfolded at the Kiambu Level V Hospital mortuary on Tuesday after the facility’s management recalled all male bodies that had been released that day following a body mix-up.

This was after one family that had arrived at the mortuary couldn’t find the body of their late father with attempts to search among the remaining bodies proving futile.

According to a member of the family, they arrived at the Kiambu mortuary early Tuesday morning and were handed a body that was supposed to be that of their father.

However, it was not and drama ensued as they tried to understand what happened to their father’s body sparking a standoff with the mortuary attendants.

“When we got into the mortuary we were given a body of a man but when we looked at it, we realised it was not that of Stephen Mburu. We demanded for our body. We were handed another one but still it was not the one we had come to collect,” said one of the family members.

The mortuary attendants embarked on a frantic search but could still not find the missing body, prompting them to recall all six male bodies that had been collected earlier in the day.

At the end of the day, five families had returned bodies they had collected for re-identification but this would still not help matters as none of them matched that of Mburu.

One of the five families that returned the body was in the process of interring their loved one when a call came through that they might have picked the wrong body. They however were allowed to continue with the funeral after it was proven they had the right one.

“The first body to be returned was from Ndumberi but still it was not that of our father. We will still wait until our is returned,” added the family member.

The mortuary attendants were back to their records and that is when the mystery was solved.

Records revealed that on Friday, August 3, a family collected a body and moved it to the Kirinyaga hospital mortuary ready for burial which was to be held later this week.

On inquiring, it was confirmed that the Kirinyaga family had collected Mburu’s body by mistake and luckily for them as well, the body of their loved one was still lying at Kiambu morgue.

It is not clear what caused the mix up leading to the wrong body being transferred to Kirinyaga.

Mburu’s family, however, blamed the mortuary management accusing it of inefficiency for failing to conduct appropriate tagging and registration of bodies at the facility.

The Kiambu mortuary management declined to comment on the matter.

Githunguri MP Gabriel Kago assured that the Kiambu mortuary will cater for additional expenses emerging from the body mix-up.