UCTH to Conduct Mass Burial of Over 50 Unclaimed Corpses After More Than 10 Years in Morgue
The management of the University of Calabar Teaching Hospital (UCTH), Cross River State, has announced plans to conduct a mass burial for more than 50 unclaimed corpses that have remained in its morgue for over 10 years.
The hospital said the prolonged storage of the bodies had put pressure on its mortuary facilities, leaving it with insufficient space to preserve additional corpses.
According to the management, several attempts to locate the relatives of the deceased and encourage them to claim the bodies have yielded no positive results.
The Chairman of the Special Task Force on the Evacuation of Abandoned and Unclaimed Corpses at UCTH, Dr David Ushie, said the mass burial had been scheduled for Wednesday, October 21, 2026, following the expiration of a three-week grace period granted to families.
Ushie urged relatives and individuals with unclaimed corpses at the hospital’s morgue to identify and retrieve them on or before the deadline, warning that all bodies remaining unclaimed would be buried without further notice.
“The October 21 deadline remains firm. The hospital would not issue another notice before carrying out the mass burial,” he stressed.
Earlier, the Deputy Chairman of the Medical Advisory Committee in charge of Clinical Services, Dr Stephen Ogbudu, who spoke on behalf of the hospital’s Chief Medical Director, Professor Ikpeme Ikpeme, attributed the increasing number of unclaimed corpses to the rising cost of burial ceremonies and cultural practices that impose significant financial obligations on bereaved families and their in-laws.
Ogbudu explained that the directive covered corpses kept in the mortuary beyond the statutory 90-day period from the date they were deposited, noting that some of the bodies had remained unclaimed for more than a decade.
He said the prolonged storage of the corpses had made the evacuation exercise necessary to ease pressure on the mortuary, improve sanitation and create a more conducive environment for clinical services.