Geisha Kow­lessar

Four hun­dred and eighty au­top­sies have been per­formed at the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre, St James, since the year be­gan and the ma­jor­i­ty have been homi­cides, se­nior foren­sic pathol­o­gist Dr Valery Alexan­drov said yes­ter­day.

"The homi­cides com­prise about 45 per cent of all the au­top­sies and the rest are mo­tor ve­hi­cle ac­ci­dents and sui­cides," Alexan­drov said in an in­ter­view yes­ter­day.

The ma­jor­i­ty of these homi­cides, he added, were gun-re­lat­ed, amount­ing to close to 75 per cent.

And the weapons used were be­com­ing more so­phis­ti­cat­ed.

"What we see are high ve­loc­i­ty ri­fles, ma­chine guns like AK 47... prob­a­bly they are com­ing from Venezuela. The prob­lem is that the of­fi­cials at the top think that this coun­try is im­mune to any­thing.

"So if ISIS were to come here we will see a new type of homi­cide called Ji­had," Alexan­drov added.

He said ac­cord­ing to in­ter­na­tion­al stan­dards, one foren­sic pathol­o­gist is sup­posed to car­ry out be­tween 250 to 300 au­top­sies a year.

"To­day (yes­ter­day) is on­ly June 2 and I al­ready did 200 au­top­sies. With this work­load to reach the an­nu­al lim­it would take me just an­oth­er month," Alexan­drov said.

He added that an av­er­age of 1,000-plus au­top­sies were con­duct­ed at the cen­tre an­nu­al­ly. An ad­di­tion­al bur­den for the cen­tre was post-mortems con­duct­ed on el­der­ly peo­ple.

"These are el­der­ly peo­ple dy­ing at home with­out any vi­o­lence but the bod­ies come at the cen­tre be­cause in this coun­try most of the bod­ies found at home and at a cer­tain stage of de­com­po­si­tion must come to foren­sic.

"The so­lu­tion is that we should have house of­fi­cers to con­duct the au­top­sies so that the foren­sic pathol­o­gists can con­cen­trate on oth­er cas­es," Alexan­drov rec­om­mend­ed.

He said at least four foren­sic pathol­o­gists were need­ed in T&T.

At Par­lia­ment's Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee on Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty on Wednes­day, the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty said it would be hir­ing a third foren­sic pathol­o­gist soon.

But Alexan­drov urged that pro­fes­sion­als like him­self ought to be con­tact­ed for ad­vice in paving the way for­ward, es­pe­cial­ly af­ter work­ing eight years in T&T.

"They don't un­der­stand why five doc­tors from Trinidad are foren­sic pathol­o­gists in the US. Every­body is ask­ing the ques­tion why foren­sic pathol­o­gists who are trained abroad are not com­ing back.

"As soon as they be­come a foren­sic pathol­o­gist they im­me­di­ate­ly get a green card be­cause such med­ical ex­am­in­ers are sup­posed to tes­ti­fy in court and you can­not tes­ti­fy be­ing an il­le­gal im­mi­grant," Alexan­drov added.

He said un­like T&T, in the US foren­sic pathol­o­gists re­ceived bet­ter ben­e­fits, in­clud­ing med­ical in­sur­ance.

Say­ing he had six cas­es of tu­ber­cu­lo­sis last year, Alexan­drov added: "These were open tu­ber­cu­lo­sis. We are ex­posed to all sorts of things, in­clud­ing Aids. The con­tract for a foren­sic pathol­o­gist is dif­fer­ent."