A “dead” man screamed in pain after mortuary staff preparing to embalm him made a cut in his leg.
Peter Kigen, from Bureti in Kenya, had collapsed at home. According to his uncle, Denis Langat, the 32-year old had been suffering from a stomach ailment which forced us to rush him to hospital. A nurse at Kapkatet Hospital “casually” checked the patient over, says Mr Langat, before declaring him dead.
Mr Kigen was transferred to the hospital’s mortuary, and the staff there promptly set about preparing him for burial. As part of the embalming process, the blood is removed from the body through the veins and replaced with formaldehyde-based chemicals through the arteries.
Mr Kigen, said, “I cannot believe what just happened,” he said. “How did they establish that I was dead?” While Mr Kigen’s family believe that the error was down to hospital staff, Kapkatet Hospital’s medical superintendent Gilbert Cheruiyot said that they were to blame for the incident: “His relatives presumed he was dead and did not even wait for certification of death,” he said. He also added, “They asked Kigen’s relatives to give them some time but they accused the clinicians of taking too much time and decided to take him to the mortuary.” “It was while the mortician was getting ready to embalm his body that she noticed some signs of life.”
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