The unavailability of local DNA testing continues to handicap the police force’s crime solving efforts and while the new forensic lab is due to be completed later this year, there has been no move to train persons, particularly the staff at the police crime lab, in this field.
In the meantime, the government has been spending a lot of money to send ranks to foreign labs with samples for analysis, since concerns about maintaining the integrity of evidence has seemly ruled out the use of two local laboratories that facilitate testing overseas.
Two labs—the Eureka Medical Laboratory and the Multi Tech Reference Lab—take samples locally and then send them to labs overseas for analysis using a courier service.
Supervisor at the Eureka Medical Laboratory Vanessa Semple told Stabroek News that the facility caters for two types of DNA testing: paternity/family relations and legal DNA. She said that the Florida based lab that does the actual analysis sends the local lab the
