The University of Benin Teaching Hospital (UBTH) has announced plans to conduct a mass burial for 270 unclaimed corpses if they are not claimed by their owners within the next six weeks.
The announcement was made by Ehizogie Adeyemi, the Coordinator of Mortuary Services at UBTH, during a press briefing on Tuesday.
The breakdown of the unclaimed corpses includes 201 infants and 69 adults. According to Adeyemi, the infants’ bodies have been in the hospital since 2023, while the adult bodies have remained unclaimed from April 2021 to December 2022.
The hospital management had previously issued a statement on Monday, providing a six-week ultimatum for the families or owners of the corpses to claim them. The statement highlighted the hospital’s difficulty in reaching the contact addresses and phone numbers provided by the owners, which are no longer valid or reachable.
“The management of the University of Benin Teaching Hospital has concluded plans to dispose of all unclaimed corpses that have been in the hospital mortuary for a very long time,” the statement read. It emphasized that any unclaimed corpses at the end of the six-week period would be disposed of through mass burial or any other appropriate method.
