Meru family puzzled after body of kin goes missing from St Theresa's Hospital mortuary
Police stand on guard outside St. Theresa’s Mission Hospital, Kiirua where a family protested after they found the body of their kin missing on August 12, 2021.
A grief stricken family from Nchoroiboro in Meru County was left with more pain after they found the body of their kin missing.
The family of Mzee Samuel M’Mwiribua, 97, had turned up at St Theresa's Hospital mortuary at about 11am Thursday to pick his body for burial, only to be given the body of another man.
According to Ms Sarah Abdi, a relative, the hospital management informed them that the body of their kin had been collected by another family from Kiengu in Igembe Central.
The family blamed the hospital for the mishap and demanded that the institution facilitate immediate exhumation of the body so that they can bury it.
Activities at the hospital were paralysed after angry mourners stormed the facility to demand the body. Anti-riot police from the nearby Kiirua Police Station were called in to restore order.
“The management was uncooperative and started saying that we were unreasonable. They are to blame because they should have marked the body well.
“Our father weighed 100 kilogrammes but they presented us with a small body weighing about 50. They have ruined our occasion and should foot the cost. People are very angry, that is why we are throwing stones,” said Ms Abdi.
Pastor Joshua Murithi of the African Independent Pentecostal Church of Africa, who was to preside over the requiem mass, said the deceased had been admitted to the hospital for one week before he died.
“We want the body of our father but the problem is that no-one wants to talk to us,” he said.
A hospital source, who declined to be named, blamed the Igembe family for the mix-up.
Ruiri MCA Mutuma Kalembe said the hospital management had agreed to help the family get the body of Mzee M’Mwiribua.
