Seven-day free storage for bodies at the Coast General

Governor Abdulswamad Nassir with Kadzandani residents in his office on Saturday / BRIAN OTIENO

Governor Abdulswamad Nassir at the CGTRH on Tuesday / BRIAN OTIENO

Soon, there will be a seven-day free stay for bodies of loved ones who die at the Coast General Teaching and Referral Hospital.

This is among a raft of changes that Governor Abdulswamad Nassir intends to enforce at all public healthcare facilities, especially the Coast General Teaching and Referral Hospital.

Today, Nassir will sign an Executive Order that will release all dead bodies at the CGTRH forthwith free of charge.

After the release of all bodies, those who will lose their lives will be allowed to be stored at the facility’s morgue for seven days free of charge.

“Starting tomorrow, whenever someone dies, because our Christian brothers do not bury their loved ones immediately, we will give you at least seven days for free at the mortuary so that the families organise themselves,” Nassir said.

He spoke in his office, where he met with residents of Kwa Bullo in Kadzandani ward. led by their MCA Fatma Kushe.

He said the more bodies stay at the morgue, the more they incur costs on their loved ones who remain behind.

He called on those who have bodies of their loved ones lying at the CGTRH mortuary to go and pick them without paying any amount.

The facility has a capacity of 90 bodies, but recent reports indicate it is under immense pressure.

Major upgrades are expected to expand the capacity.

This could be part of wider measures to ensure transparency and fairness at the morgue after reports that some of the morticians at the facility could be making deals using the bodies.

“I received a call with a very strange request that pricked my mind. Someone asked for a job at the mortuary,” Nassir said. 

"The guy had no training in that field but his motivation was the deals that happen at the morgue. I was dumbfounded. When did we get to this?”

He said the CGTRH and other public hospitals in Mombasa give critical services to Mombasa people and should not be treated as a money-minting place.

He said public health facilities in the county gobble up Sh1 billion in salaries a year.

The governor also said the county will soon introduce digital ticketing at the CGTRH so that patients who visit the facility for treatment enter their details at a ticketing booth and receive a ticket and wait for their turn to see the doctor.

This way, Nassir said, he will be able to know how many patients visit the facility a day, how long one takes to see a doctor, how long a patient takes with the doctor, among other key data that will help him make decisions based on service delivery.

Nassir also said he will station specific officers in public hospitals to ensure patients get treatment.

The officers, he said, will be going round asking patients whether they have been treated and if not, why.

This, he said, is in an effort to streamline the services offered in public hospitals after the hullabaloo that hit the county following the death of a member of the Mvita NG-CDF staff on February 21 at the Coast General Teaching and Referral Hospital.

The death led to the temporary suspension of the CGTRH CEO Iqbal Khandwalla to pave way for investigations over possible culpability on his part.

This was after Mvita MP Mohamed Machele raised hell, accusing the administrator of arrogance at the expense of human life.

However, on Friday, the CGTRH Board found no culpability or liability on Khandwalla’s part.

“The findings confirm that there was no personal act, omission or negligence attributable to Dr Khandwalla in connection with the patient’s death. Therefore, his interdiction stands lifted forthwith,” a statement from the office of the county secretary and head of county public service read in part.

Khandwalla has since resigned.

INSTANT ANALYSIS:

The CGTRH is a facility that has a bed capacity of 700 and treats a primary population of about 700,000 and a secondary population of about two million in the Coast region. It has, however, been in the headlines recently for all the wrong reasons, with accusations of poor service delivery and no drugs bedeviling it, leading to the resignation of its CEO Iqbal Khandwalla.