A family from Kiambagathi, Kirinyaga County was overcome by emotion after a local private hospital released the body of their kin on Wednesday, February 24, following a story done by Citizen TV.
Citizen TV had highlighted the plight of the family after the hospital detained the body of Beatrice Wanjiru for a month after the family failed to settle the Ksh1.3 million hospital bill.
However, the hospital waived the hospital bill paving the way for the burial of Wanjiru.
The family proceeded to the hospital's morgue in Nyeri town on Wednesday morning to collect Wanjiru's body and later buried the deceased at their home in Kirinyaga County. Led by Wanjiru's son James Migwi, the family was relieved, thanking Citizen TV for airing their plight.
"We thank Royal Media Services for airing our story which prompted the hospital to waive the bill. Now we can lay my mother to rest," Migwi stated.
Wanjiru had succumbed to lung cancer at the private hospital in December 2020. The hospital's superintendent Jeff Mungai said that the body would be released as soon as the bills were settled.
“We acknowledge we have the body, but we are waiting for the family to come and engage with us because the last engagement we had with them was on 12th of January,” Mungai stated.
In a similar incident, Citizen TV's feature of a man who was serving a life sentence after being allegedly framed by his daughter in a defilement case was freed in December 2020.
The 2019 feature dubbed Prison Diaries by TV anchor Lulu Hassan aired the story of the father's plight who had already served an eight-year sentence after he was sentenced in 2012.
High Court Judge George Odunga ruled that the daughter had been used by the mother to implicate Wambua in the incident.
Wambua was released on a cash bail of Ksh30,000 and an alternative bond of Ksh200,000 with a surety of a similar amount pending retrial.
