By Victor Ogalle
Humanitarian body Kenya Red Cross Society today donated a mobile morgue which has a capacity of holding 300 bodies after the Malindi Hospital morgue that has a capacity of holding 30 bodies was overwhelmed by bodies being retrieved from Shakahola.
The mobile morgue is a custom made 40 feet container with a state of art cooling system that has played a huge role in the Shakahola Tragedy in preserving bodies.
The Malindi Sub County funeral home has a capacity of 30 bodies and was already being overstretched especially with the trickling of bodies from the shallow graves, where detectives from the homicide department managed to exhume 110 bodies that eventually ended up at the said morgue together with one survivor who succumbed last week at the adjacent Malindi Sub County Hospital.
Exhumation of more bodies at the Shakahola forest located in the vast Chakama Ranch will continue on Monday next week. The exercise was halted today due to bad weather following heavy downpour being experienced at the coastal strip towards the end of April where at the time the death toll had been registered at 110.
Government pathologist Johanssen Oduor has revealed that a post mortem was on Thursday administered on 24 bodies among them three children.
On Friday the pathologists will perform a post mortem on the 11 remaining bodies.
Johannsen further revealed that among the bodies thera was a woman whose uterus showed signs of her having given birth recently. He further said that eigth bodies are not in a bad state and members of the public will be allowed to view for identification purposes.
“After identification and it is positive the particular family member will be subjected to the DNA process just to ensure that we follow procedure as it has been the case since we started,” said Johannsen.
Another body showed indications of injuries caused by a blunt object on the head with a majority showing signs of starvation and strangulation especially on children.
Kenya Red Cross has set up a family tracing desk at the Malindi Hospital as well as a counselling desk where their counsellors are offering Psychosocial Support to members of the public and other service providers including the medics and the volunteers.
