Improving the Medicolegal Death Investigation System in Belize

Gian Cho

The National Forensic Science Services assists the police department with carrying out post-mortems on about five hundred bodies. These are in the cases when a person’s death is classified as sudden, unexpected, unexplained, suspicious, and violent deaths. With support from the U.S. Embassy, the Government is working to strengthen Belize’s Medicolegal Death Investigation System, specifically as it relates to the Medical Examiner’s Office, a unit within the department. Executive Director Gian Cho told News Five that the goal is to improve the department’s human resources to consistently provide independent, accurate, complete information to support death investigations.

Gian Cho, Executive Director, National Forensic Science Service

“The staff size is very small, but compared to what it was before 2013, it was just one doctor assisting police; now we have three. So the staff size is growing and this effort is to ensure that we have adequate training, on the job continuous medical education in the area of forensic pathology and ultimately, certification – in-country certification or what other places call board certification for our medical examiners – which means that they go through a number of C.M.E. hours per year, they undergo professional development opportunities to stay ahead of the field of forensic medicine and forensic pathology. Who came to assist with this is Doctor Roger Mitchell; he is currently the chief Medical Examiner in Washington D.C.  He initially came to Belize back in 2018 to do an assessment of the Medical Examiner’s Office so this is the next step forward. It took us a couple years, but we are getting there to institute regular training for our medical examiners and for any new medical examiners that come onboard at the NFSS and like I said ultimately to have in-country certification to offer a measure of quality assurance for our staff.”
Executive Director Cho says that there are also infrastructure and equipment needs of the department that are also being addressed.  The two other units under the N.F.S.S. Department are the Scenes of Crime and the Forensic Lab.