DETAINING BODIES BY HOSPITALS IS DECADENT

Published By the Daily Nation on Saturday 4th October 2025

In African culture, the dead are treated with dignity and respect. This may go beyond African values to ethics of humanity that must be held on to dearly. While it has been not practical to litigate morals, Honorable Professor, Dr, Justice Nixon Wanyama Sifuna broke this false cliché by authoritatively noting, that the practice has been used to “blackmail, embarrass, traumatise, and coerce bereaved families into submitting to monetary demands by the hospital. There is no property in a dead body, and correspondingly there cannot be a right of lien on it.”

In Kenya, the practice has been so rampant that grieving families have been thrust into further tumult and forced to liquidate albeit on a short notice, family property in order to meet hospital demands. It is worse when the involved families are without adequate wherewithal and or of no substantial means. This has forced some families to keep on postponing the burial dates in order to fundraise.

It is important to query where this attitude and careless practice emanated from. Obviously, capitalism fed utter greed, which blinds souls from being merciful and passionate, is to blame. Death of a relative is nothing to joke about and the callousness by which hospitals treat believed families is an indication that love for money goes beyond humanity. Not use poverty and lack of money to pay for exorbitant hospital bills and levies should to punish mourning folks. It is inhuman!

Professor, Dr, Justice Sifuna was therefore spot on by declaring that families should be allowed to pick the bodies of their loved ones and where hospitals find it hard to waive the bills and other levies as an act of mercy, then they pursue a separate civil litigation process to recover their money.

It is also advisable that hospitals enter into contracts with insurance companies for cover on risky ventures like where it can be completely and without any doubt that a family cannot be in a position to pay for medical and mortuary bills. While this may never have been tried, it is worth exploring.

Picture a situation whereby cultural and religious implications apply. For instance, adherents of the Muslim faith bury their kin in the shortest time possible, possibly in less than twenty-four hours. It thus puts such affected family in a situation of immense distress. You can imagine a situation where such a family has to have, at their own cost, have the body of their kin preserved, against their will and tenets of their faith for three to five years. That is blasphemy!

Let medical facilities practice the very principles of humanity and let grieving families first bury their kin then discuss the bills thereafter. Contrary to this amounts to sacrilege and torture of innocent families.

Thank you Kenyan judiciary for coming to the rescue of grieving Kenyans.