Public health officers in Kandara, Murang’a county, on Thursday, April 5, led the exhumation of the body of an elderly woman who was buried by another family in a case of mistaken identity.
The family of Elizabeth Wairimu Mwangi, 108, had gone to collect the body at Gaichanjiru Mission Hospital mortuary on Tuesday but the one they were given did not resemble that of their kin.
John Mwangi, one of the family members, said they had to postpone the burial to look for Wairimu’s body.
“We had done all the preparation to lay our grandmother to rest but when we went to collect the body were given a different one,” Mwangi said.
Mwangi said the mortuary attendants owned up to the mistake and helped the family trace Wairimu’s body to Kibiku village, where it was buried last week.
“We will now have time to a decent send-off for our kin once the pending issues are sorted out,” he added.
James Mungai, a relative of Lydia Muthoni, who passed on at the age of 78, said they got a call from the mortuary attendants informing them that they may have buried the wrong body.
Mungai said this came as a shock to them though he admitted that they didn’t have ample time to identify the body.
“The body was covered halfway and we didn’t take time to check it well,” Mungai said.
“We will have to organize another burial which will come with extra expenses because we had spent a lot of money to bury the wrong person,” he added.
