UBTH to Carry Out Mass Burial of 462 Unclaimed Corpses

Felix Omoh-Asun in Benin 

The management of University of Benin Teaching Hospital (UBTH) has called on people who have abandoned their dead ones in the mortuary to evacuate them immediately.

The management said failure to claim the dead bodies would result in carrying out mass burial for them.

 Professor Adebola Ehizele, Deputy Chairman, Medical Advisory Committee in charge of Research and Ethics, raised the alarm over the number of unclaimed corpses in the hospital mortuary during an interview in a local broadcast station in Benin City.

Prof. Ehizele said the corpses have been long in the hospital’s morgue, some as far back since January 2023 and June 2025.

She said as many as 462 dead bodies out of which 350 are children, have been lying in morgue waiting to be collected.

She said the management gave six weeks deadline for the owners of the corpses to claim them, noting that at the expiration of the deadline the corpses would be disposed-off through mass burial.

In a statement issued by the management on February 20, 2026, said it has concluded plans to dispose-off all unclaimed  corpses that have been in the hospital mortuary for a long time.

According to the statement, such corpses include that of adults and children/infants that have been in the morgue since January 2023 up till June 2025.

“We hereby request that owners of such corpses should 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 through mass burial or any other manner considered appropriate”, the statement added.