Identify them or they could go to medical schools: Homa Bay ultimatum on 14 unclaimed bodies

By  George Odiwuor

Correspondent

Nation Media Group

At the Homa Bay County Teaching and Referral Hospital mortuary, 14 bodies lie on cold slabs, nameless, unclaimed and almost forgotten.

Thirteen men and one woman were brought in police vehicles, and none has had a visitor in more than a year since the first body arrived.

Some were brought in decomposed, and now they face a deadline of October 24.

After that date, they will leave the mortuary in one of two ways: wrapped for burial in a mass grave at Arunda Public Cemetery on the outskirts of Homa Bay Town, or tagged and loaded onto a van bound for a medical school anatomy laboratory, where they could become what doctors call “the first patient” for students learning to save lives.

Hospital management wants some of the unclaimed bodies to be used by medical students for practical anatomy lessons.

In Kenya, when no one claims a body, a hospital must seek a court order before disposing of it.

Officials at the health facility said they had secured a court order allowing them to dispose of the bodies, which they said had been collected by security agencies from different locations before being taken to the mortuary.

Usually, bodies in similar circumstances are collected and buried in a mass grave.

However, Dr Vincent Oduor, the hospital’s chief executive officer, said that, besides burying the bodies, the hospital could also release some to medical schools for training.

In a notice, the hospital appealed to the public to help identify the bodies before they are removed from the mortuary for burial or use in medical training.

“If you have any lost relative, lost friend, please come to our referral parlour and confirm if one of those bodies was lost. Because after that we will be forced to dispose those bodies maybe to the cemetery or to the medical schools,” he said.

The court order allows the hospital to keep the bodies until October 24.

Dr Oduor said that once the court-approved period expires, the hospital will involve other authorities in arranging for the bodies to be buried in various cemeteries.

He added that medical training institutions could also take some of the bodies for teaching purposes.

He said that, following the public notice, various medical schools would be informed of the situation.

Dr Oduor explained that once the period stipulated in the court order expires, the schools would visit the hospital to select bodies suitable for training.

“They will just come and do what we call legal body shopping. If they find that the body is okay for practical use, they can use it for training medical students,” he explained.

Medical students use human cadavers primarily to study anatomy, develop surgical skills and learn professional ethics.

Advanced students and resident surgeons typically practise incisions, suturing and the handling of tissues on preserved cadavers before operating on living patients.

Some of the bodies at Homa Bay County Teaching and Referral Hospital could be used for such training.

According to hospital management, some of the bodies have been in the mortuary since July 2025.

“Some were brought when they were decomposed but all were brought by police officers. Of the 14 bodies, 13 are male and one is female,” Dr Oduor said.

He said five bodies were from Homa Bay Town Sub-County, five from Ndhiwa, two from Rachuonyo North (Kendu region), one from Mbita and one from Rachuonyo South (Oyugis region).

He urged residents of the five sub-counties to come forward to identify the bodies.

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