Health Officials in Kisasi village, Shamakhokho location, had to exhume a cleric's body at 9 pm on Saturday, August 1, after they buried the wrong body.
The team had buried the body of a man belived to be covid-19 negative instead of that of Linus Simwa, a clergy and chair of the Vihiga Referral Hospital board, who had tested positive for the disease.
Morgue attendants noticed the mistake only after the man's family came for the body and they could not find it. To their dismay, they noticed that the cleric's body was still at the mortuary and they had to go back and exhume the body.
"Several customs had to be performed because we do not know the man who had been buried here," Shamakhokho location chief Modlyn Imbayi stated.
Imbayi added that it was a strange encounter for a family to bury the wrong body in the area.
Simwa had succumbed to covid-19 on Wednesday, July 29 at the Vihiga Referral Hospital while the other man had died shortly after being admitted at the hospital.
They were both placed in body bags and taken to the mortuary.
Meanwhile, families of those succumbing to the virus have been forced to pay extra expenses after the facilities increased body storage charges.
The additional charges have been bestowed on the families because the bodies need to be fumigated and disinfected in line with the Ministry of Health guidelines.
In a past press briefing, Acting Health Director Dr Patrick Amoth explained that the Personal Protective Equipment took up 80% of the charges in treatment of the virus.
"PPE's are only used once and then disposed," Amoth stated.
So far, Kenya has recorded 22, 597 cases. Of the cases, 8,740 have recovered while 382 have succumbed to the virus.
