By Benadeta Mwaura - Reporter
Kenya, August 20, 2026 - Nairobi County is seeking to modernise the identification of unclaimed bodies using technology that could help match deceased persons with missing-person records and enable families to trace relatives who may have died without identification.
The move comes as the county prepares to seek court orders to dispose of 473 unclaimed bodies held at the Nairobi City County Funeral Home, formerly the City Mortuary. The bodies have remained at the facility between March 2025 and March 2026.
The county has called on the National Registration Bureau (NRB) and the National Police Service to modernise biometric identification and family-tracing systems to improve the process of identifying bodies and reconnecting them with their relatives.
The intervention comes after the mandatory seven-day notice period for the 473 bodies expired on August 18, paving the way for the county to approach the courts for burial orders.
Nairobi Governor Johnson Sakaja's administration says the move is necessary both to address congestion at the funeral home and to ensure that the county complies with existing public-health and mortuary regulations.
The proposed technological upgrade is intended to strengthen the process of identifying deceased persons, particularly where bodies arrive without identification documents or relatives are unable to locate missing family members.
A more integrated biometric and records system could allow authorities to compare information from different government databases and improve the chances of identifying people whose bodies would otherwise remain unclaimed.
The county has previously identified the high number of unclaimed bodies and ineffective identification and disposal systems as challenges facing Nairobi's health sector. Its development planning documents have listed improved identification and disposal of unclaimed bodies among the areas requiring intervention.
The issue has also attracted attention at the Nairobi County Assembly, where concerns have previously been raised about families struggling to establish whether missing relatives were being held at county mortuaries.
The latest development highlights a problem that goes beyond mortuary congestion.
For families searching for missing relatives, an unidentified body can mean months of uncertainty, particularly where police, hospitals, mortuaries and registration agencies do not have systems that easily connect their records.
More from Kenya
Improved identification would therefore serve two purposes: helping authorities manage unclaimed bodies while giving families a better chance of finding relatives whose whereabouts are unknown.
The county's push for better technology comes as it prepares to seek burial orders for the 473 bodies whose seven-day public notice period has expired.
However, the planned disposal of the bodies also places urgency on the identification process. Once burial orders are granted and the bodies are disposed of, families could face additional difficulties tracing relatives unless adequate records and identification information are maintained.
Nairobi County has previously obtained court orders for the disposal of unclaimed bodies. Its 2025/26 budget documents recorded six orders covering 1,062 unclaimed bodies as part of efforts to ease congestion in funeral homes.
The latest initiative therefore signals an attempt to address the problem not only at the point of disposal but earlier — by improving how authorities identify the deceased and trace their families in the first place.
For Nairobi, the challenge is no longer simply finding space for unclaimed bodies.
It is building a system capable of answering a more important question: Who are these people, and where are their families?
That is where the proposed technology could make the biggest difference.