Fresh details have emerged on how James Oyugi Onyango, a 59-year-old man who succumbed to COVID-19 was hurriedly buried without a burial permit from the area chief.
Zack Onyango the brother to James Oyugi Onyango, the 59-year-old man who succumbed to COVID-19 in Siaya county detailed how his brother travelled directly from Mombasa heading to Siaya before getting involved in an accident at Awasi along Kisumu Kericho highway due to his vehicle suffering a brake failure.
Zack refuted claims that his brother spent a night in Nairobi saying that the only place his brother spent the night was in Kisumu at his friend’s place before proceeding to Siaya the following day.
”James together with his family left Mombasa on Sunday, April 5th on a journey to come home for his leave without having a stopover in Nairobi as claimed in various platforms, he called to let me know that he is passing through without a stop,”
”Everything was okay with him until the eventual accident at Awasi on April 6th, as he was speeding trying to beat the 7 pm curfew. After the accident his wife called our cousin Francis Ochieng who resides in Kisumu, who picked them up with a different vehicle, taking them to his place before they eventually proceeded to Siaya on Tuesday, April 7th in a different hired vehicle,” said Zack
After the accident, James is said to have experienced some chest pains due to the accident but he ignored the discomfort. It wasn’t until Thursday 9th April that he opened up to his brother about the pain in his chest.
“On Thursday night James opened up about his chest on before I got him some medication to help him through the night, as we had to wait for dawn before taking him to hospital,” said his brother.
Zack called two boda boda operators to assist him in transporting his brother to Matibabu Foundation Hospital after he began coughing repeatedly. At the hospital, nine medics are said to have attended to the victim.
The victim is also said to be suffering from blood pressure and diabetes which may have accelerated his death.
According to the brother the victim is said to have gone to Siaya General Hospital for chest scans as Matibabu lacked the requisite equipment, before being transported back to Matibabu Health Centre, where he finally succumbing to chest pains.
The family did not get a medical report on their brother’s death, as a few moments after the death, the local area chief called informing them that his brother was to be buried immediately.
” I got a call from our area chief who said that my brother was to be buried immediately, I tried to reason with them as we were waiting for a medical report, but the chief informed that it was an order from above.”
The burial could not occur on the said day as samples taken from his body had been sent to Nairobi for verification, since they did not believe that their brother was positive of the disease.
According to the brother, things were done in a hasty manner which did not let them accord their brother a decent burial as he was buried without a permit to show that he died from Covid-19.
“We had a coffin but they would not allow us to bury him in it. No postmortem was done on his body and the worse thing is that the medical personnel dumped him in an already dug grave and went aside leaving us to pour soil on him, it looked like a movie to me I did not believe it.”
