Impartial along with excellent reporting and management

The aim of the CFPSL which will celebrate its 20th birthday on November 16, next year,

the Sunday Times learns, is to achieve the highest standards in forensic medicine throughout Sri Lanka.

The beginnings have been humble and Prof. Anuruddhi Edirisinghe who got into forensic medicine in 2000, recalls how at that time doctors, particularly women, were reluctant to enter this field.

The CFPSL had been born when the country was in the throes of terrorism. Suicide bomb attacks, firearm deaths, deaths related to terrorism, allegations of torture as well as rising rates of child abuse were high on the list of daily work of forensic pathologists in addition to routine duties.

So, who are forensic medicine specialists? They are medical specialists in forensic medicine, with about 40 working for the Health Ministry in major state hospitals across the country (they are the JMOs) and about 20 working for the Higher Education Ministry in the medical faculties.

Their job has two prongs – ‘clinical forensic medicine’ which deals with the ‘living’ and involves examination of a victim or a perpetrator for medico-legal issues and ‘forensic pathology’ which deals with the ‘dead’.

Under clinical forensic medicine falls cases of child abuse, sexual abuse, assault, road traffic accidents, alleged torture and more and under forensic pathology is unnatural deaths such as suicides, homicides, accidents and deaths where a reason or cause is not known. It is under the latter that postmortems are conducted by them.

Prof. Edirisinghe points out that the CFPSL founded by President Dr. L.B.L. de Alwis with a membership of 20, has grown from strength to strength. It has proven not only to Sri Lanka but the world about the impartiality of forensic pathologists in crime investigation and excellent reporting and management even with minimum facilities.