Rad­hi­ca Sookraj

Pathol­o­gists work­ing at the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre in St James are do­ing one of the dead­liest jobs, yet they are func­tion­ing with­out med­ical health in­sur­ance cov­er­age.The three pathol­o­gists and an X-ray tech­ni­cian per­form anatom­i­cal dis­sec­tions on bod­ies in­fect­ed with tu­ber­cu­lo­sis, HIV, car­cino­gens and oth­er life-threat­en­ing dis­eases. Be­cause they are con­tract work­ers, they are not en­ti­tled to a med­ical plan or health ben­e­fits.

In an in­ter­view, foren­sic pathol­o­gist Dr Valery Alexan­drov said they were ex­posed to dan­ger­ous de­com­po­si­tion gas­es from the corpses as well as tox­ic chem­i­cals such as ace­tone, for­ma­line and car­cino­gens which cause lung, den­tal and oc­u­lar (eye) prob­lems.

"Our con­tract does not in­clude specifics of our work. The X-ray tech­ni­cian is ex­posed to ra­di­a­tion, and we are work­ing with dan­ger­ous sub­stances like gun­pow­der residue and for­ma­line (a sub­stance used to pre­serve tis­sue from de­com­pos­ing), which is ten per cent car­cino­genic (can­cer caus­ing)," Alexan­drov said. He ex­plained that a spe­cial mi­cro­sta­tion was need­ed, and all chem­i­cals should be used with spe­cial pre­cau­tions.

Alexan­drov, who has worked in dif­fer­ent parts of the world in­clud­ing Italy, Unit­ed States and Cana­da, said T&T was the on­ly place in the world where no med­ical cov­er­age was pro­vid­ed for pathol­o­gists.

Foren­sic cen­tre not meet­ing world health stan­dards

He ex­plained that the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre was op­er­at­ing be­low World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion (WHO) stan­dards. WHO guide­lines stip­u­late that a pathol­o­gist was sup­posed to do be­tween 250 to 350 au­top­sies per year, but the team has al­ready done close to 1,000 au­top­sies for 2013.

Last year, Alexan­drov said he did 480 au­top­sies. Some of these were non-crim­i­nal cas­es which could eas­i­ly have been done by a gen­er­al pathol­o­gist. As the death toll in­creas­es, Alexan­drov said their work­load has be­come over­whelm­ing and the risks have be­come greater."This coun­try is in­fa­mous for hav­ing a lot of TB, HIV. Last year, I did six cas­es on bod­ies which turned out to be in­fect­ed with TB," Alexan­drov said.

He ex­plained, "In the hos­pi­tal if some­one is found to have TB, a doc­tor can say he is not do­ing the au­top­sy and is­sue a death cer­tifi­cate based on in­for­ma­tion. If some­body is brought here and they are shot five times, and I open the body and find TB, I can­not say I won't do the au­top­sy, be­cause it is an in­ves­ti­ga­tion. I can­not refuse," Alexan­drov said.

He said it takes more than 20 scalpels to open up a body. On one oc­ca­sion, Alexan­drov said he had to use mon­ey from his own pock­ets to pur­chase scalpels (a small and ex­treme­ly sharp blad­ed in­stru­ment used for surgery and anatom­i­cal dis­sec­tion).Say­ing med­ical in­sur­ance should be manda­to­ry for the job, Alexan­drov said he has been lob­by­ing on be­half of the oth­er con­tract work­ers to im­prove their work­ing con­di­tions.

Set up a bones de­pos­i­to­ry

Mean­while, Alexan­drov said the cen­tre was cramped and should be out­fit­ted with a bones de­pos­i­to­ry. He said it was com­mon for skele­tal re­mains to be brought in, but there was no prop­er de­pos­i­to­ry to store the bones. There are nine box­es of bones in the cen­tre and be­tween 15 to 20 uniden­ti­fied bod­ies."We are re­ceiv­ing a lot of skele­tal re­mains which must be iden­ti­fied by DNA. It takes time, so the bones should be cleaned and put in sep­a­rate box­es. This is why we need a bones de­pos­i­to­ry," Alexan­drov ex­plained.

He al­so said there should be at least three au­top­sy sta­tions. Cur­rent­ly, there are two sta­tions but one is not in use. When the Sun­day Guardian vis­it­ed the cen­tre, the two au­top­sy sta­tions were un­kempt. Ceil­ing tiles were stained and loose. The area em­anat­ed a stench which cir­cu­lat­ed through­out the build­ing be­cause of a cen­tral ven­ti­la­tion sys­tem. The floor was cov­ered with wa­ter.

Alexan­drov said to re­duce the num­ber of au­top­sies per year, the Gov­ern­ment should sep­a­rate foren­sic pathol­o­gy from lim­it­ed pathol­o­gy and hire a gen­er­al pathol­o­gist to ex­am­ine non-crim­i­nal cas­es. This would bring the num­ber of pathol­o­gists to four.

Op­er­at­ing like a kinder­garten

"I still don't un­der­stand why we are be­ing trans­ferred from the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty to the Min­istry of Jus­tice. We are work­ing along with po­lice so our di­rect com­mu­ni­ca­tion is in­te­gral to po­lice work," Alexan­drov said. He al­so called on the Gov­ern­ment to open the cen­tre 24/7.

"Right now we op­er­ate like kinder­garten: from 8 am to 4 pm. If some­one dies on a week­end, the body has to be sent to the hos­pi­tal mor­tu­ary or a fu­ner­al home and then brought here on a Mon­day. The body can be tam­pered with and valu­able ev­i­dence is lost dur­ing that time. The fam­i­lies face ad­di­tion­al trau­ma be­cause they have to wait al­most the en­tire day for the body to be trans­port­ed here," Alexan­drov said.

He called for a re­moval ser­vice to be es­tab­lished which will bring bod­ies im­me­di­ate­ly to the cen­tre. He al­so said pathol­o­gists should vis­it crime scenes; but be­cause of their over­whelm­ing work­load, this rarely hap­pens."We are op­er­at­ing like blind kit­tens be­cause we have to de­pend on po­lice pho­tographs to ex­am­ine a crime scene. Every­thing here is up­side down," Alexan­drov said. He al­so added that Dis­trict Med­ical Of­fi­cers were not trained in foren­sics yet the prac­tice was to call a DMO to de­clare death.

$3.7m ap­proved to up­grade Foren­sic Cen­tre

In May short­ly be­fore she left of­fice, for­mer jus­tice min­is­ter Christlyn Moore an­nounced that Cab­i­net had ap­proved $3.7 mil­lion to re­fur­bish the cen­tre. She said one of the two au­top­sy sta­tions was shut down based on rec­om­men­da­tions from the Oc­cu­pa­tion­al Safe­ty and Health Au­thor­i­ty.Moore al­so said Cab­i­net had ap­proved the hir­ing of one ad­di­tion­al ev­i­dence tech­ni­cian, two foren­sic bi­ol­o­gists and two sci­en­tif­ic ex­am­in­ers. The re­fur­bish­ment works are sched­uled to be com­plet­ed by March next year.

In an e-mail last week, Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Gary Grif­fith said there were on­go­ing meet­ings to dis­cuss the es­tab­lish­ment of foren­sic lab­o­ra­to­ries.Grif­fith said he has been com­mu­ni­cat­ing with a UK foren­sic sci­ence com­pa­ny, which has a Caribbean base, known as CAR­I­FOR, es­tab­lished specif­i­cal­ly to bring the best of UK foren­sic sci­ence to as­sist law en­force­ment and crim­i­nal jus­tice in the Caribbean.

"They are known for set­ting up and es­tab­lish­ing full-scale lab­o­ra­to­ries and for per­son­al­ly lead­ing sci­en­tif­ic teams with help to solve many of the UK's most high-pro­file crim­i­nal cas­es," Grif­fith said. He said im­prov­ing T&T's foren­sic weapon­ry would as­sist in the crime fight.