Forensic pathologists to double in next five years – Mowatt
Published:Thursday | December 12, 2019 | 12:10 AMNickoy Wilson/Gleaner Writer
The Institute of Forensic Science and Legal Medicine is over the next five years hoping to double the number of government-employed forensic pathologists, through an already-established scholarship programme, to ease the burden on its current staff, according to Executive Director Dr Judith Mowatt.
The institute is responsible for conducting forensic examinations and analyses on physical evidence submitted by the police and other agencies.
Mowatt said the institute wants to hire at least five more forensic pathologists to add to the current staff complement of seven.
“[We want ] a minimum of 12, a maximum of 14, so we can assign one per parish. Because there are some parishes that have a higher volume of forensic cases, like Kingston and St Andrew, so one pathologist simply couldn’t handle the workload. So some parishes, as a matter of course, would require two,” the executive director told The Gleaner.
Although becoming a forensic pathologist is a time-consuming and costly undertaking, Mowatt said that through a partnership with a foundation and more recently, the Jamaican Government, the institute has, since 2015, undertaken the training of its own pathologists.
“We have a combination of funding to train current and future pathologists. There’s the Chang Foundation in Canada that facilitates financial support for Caribbean nationals going to Canada to pursue a fellowship in forensic pathology, but the Government of Jamaica has also introduced an initiative of its own in order to train Jamaican pathologist who are going to Canada as part of the Chang Fellowship Programme,” she said, pointing out that there is now a $5-million allocation in the institution’s budget in this respect.
INCREASE AWARENESS
So far, she said, four pathologists have been trained under the programme as she made a plea for more persons to see forensic pathology as a potential career path.
“We want to increase awareness that there are career opportunities in forensic sciences, and, not only that, we are not only interested in you, we’ll be investing in your education if you decide to join this profession,” Mowatt said.
Last month, The Gleaner reported that forensic pathologists were carrying out 80 per cent more post-mortem examinations annually than the globally accepted best practise cap of 250.
Statistics provided by the institute at the time revealed that up to October, each pathologist had on average conducted 392 post-mortem examinations. It also indicated that pathologists carried out 453 examinations in 2018, compared to 691 examinations in 2017 and 588 in 2016.