The management of University of Benin Teaching Hospital (UBTH) has raised the alarm over the large number of unclaimed bodies in the hospital mortuary.
The Deputy Chairman, Medical Advisory Committee in charge of Research and Ethics, Professor Adebola Ehizele, disclosed this in a local broadcast station in Benin City.
Ehizele said the corpses have been in the hospital’s mortuary since January 2023 up until June 2025, noting that the unclaimed corpses are about 462 out of which 350 are children.
She said the management has given a grace of six weeks for the owners’ of the corpses to claim them, adding that at the expiration of the deadline, they would be disposed through mass burial.
A statement issued by the management of the hospital in February, stated that the establishment had concluded plans to dispose all unclaimed corpses in the hospital mortuary for a long time.
According to the statement, such corpses include those of adults, children and infants that have been in the morgue since January 2023 up till June 2025.
“We hereby request that owners of such corpses come forward and claim them as they can no longer be accommodated in the hospital morgue.
“Consequently, owners of such corpses are hereby given six weeks’ notice from the date of this publication/announcement to claim their corpse (s).
“Any unclaimed corpse(s) at the expiration of the six weeks period shall be disposed off through mass burial or any other manner considered appropriate,” the statement added.