Family's agony as kin's body detained in morgue over bill

A family in Ol Kalou in Nyandarua County has been unable to bury their mother more than a year after she passed on due to an outstanding hospital bill.

Jane Wangui Mwihuri’s body has been lying at Peter Ngare Funeral Home in Nakuru since December 2016 after the family failed to pay a medical bill amounting to Sh1.1 million to Mediheal Hospital.

The bill has since shot to Sh2 million.

“Our mother was admitted to the hospital in December 2016 after suffering a concussion in her head following a matatu accident,” her daughter, Ann Wanjiru, told the Nation.

“At the hospital, it was discovered that her head was bleeding internally. Doctors recommended an operation,” she added. 

Wangui died during the operation. Her body was taken to the private facility, with instructions from the hospital not to release the body.

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An officer in charge of records at the mortuary and who did not wish to go on record said the facility is willing to negotiate terms of payment with the family for as long as they clear with the hospital.

“We are protecting the hospital bill by holding on to the body. We must get approval from Mediheal to release it to the family,” she said.

“By the time mother died two weeks after we admitted her, the medical bill had risen to Sh1.1million. Our family could not afford this amount and we had to rely on friends for help,” Wanjiru narrated.

The family suspended all burial arrangements to raise funds to offset the hospital bill. But more than one year on, Wangui’s body is still lying at the hospital mortuary, with the bill bubbling over every day.

According to the facility’s records, the mortuary fee now stands at Sh600,000.

Queries to the hospital about this dispute by the Nation were unanswered.

In March 2017, Wanjiru’s family was able to raise Sh200,000 from friends which they presented to the hospital.

“We hoped that they would accept the amount and allow us to fetch the body for burial, with the balance to be cleared at a later date. The hospital, however, said it was too little,” Wanjiru said.

She added: “We even offered the title deed of our seven hectare land, but even this they refused to take.”

After consistent pleas from the family, the hospital manager referred the family to the owner of Mediheal Group of Hospitals, Dr Swarup Mishra, who is also the MP for Kesses.

“We met Mishra in March 2017 and explained our predicament to him. The MP offered to deduct Sh150,000 from the bill. He asked us to clear the rest of the money for the body to be released for burial.”

But even the remaining Sh950,000 was a long shot for the family. 

Attempts by the family to seek for funds from elsewhere have come to nought, as the county administration of Nyandarua keeps sending them away without help.

“We have sought help from the governor’s office in vain. We have tried to engage the county women rep, visiting her office more than four times, but nothing has been forthcoming. She keeps asking us to come back at a later date,” Wanjiru narrated.

Her family’s predicament only points to the jeopardy that poor families find themselves in when hospitals hold on to bodies of relatives, due to unpaid hospital bills.

Wanjiru is a kindergarten teacher in Nairobi while her siblings are subsistence farmers and casual workers.

The family is now appealing to well-wishers to assist them to get their mother’s body for burial.

“All we want is to accord our mother a decent send-off,” said Wanjiru.