City Funeral home, formerly City Mortuary, is now full and no longer accepts unidentified bodies; this is a situation that greeted police on September 9th in an attempt to book unidentified body.
This has been the norm for many years; that any unidentified bodies either from road accidents, suicides or murders are booked at City mortuary which is public facility.
But the standoff between City County staff and officials has now opened the lid on the state of the public facility that has been serving Nairobians for ages.
Chief Officer for Public health in Nairobi, Tom Nyakaba has said that the matter has been temporarily solved to allow police book the bodies as it has been the case
“We have met with the police and we will allow them to book the bodies but this is just a temporary solution,” Nyakaba said adding that there are some measures that are being considered so as to solve the matter once and for all.
The Chief Officer said the mortuary was meant to hold only 184 but at the moment, the facility has over 600 bodies which is way beyond the required capacity.
“We sorted out the standoff because we cannot allow bodies to be dumped on the streets but the issues are that the unidentified bodies brought by police stay for long before the kin are traced or they come for them,” Nyakaba explained.
He added that, “What we are looking for at the moment is for other mortuaries to accept the bodies from the police since it has been norm that unidentified bodies are dumped at the city morgue,”
The officer said the bodies collected by police are not from Nairobi County alone but from other counties thus they are planning in such a way such that bodies belonging to specific counties be taken to their morgues.
He said a recent plan by the County to dispose of 120 unclaimed bodies was thwarted after some activists moved to court challenging the process that had been published by the county on August 21, 2024.
