Namaste!
Trying to build bridges and solve puzzles for the development of Forensic Medicine teaching and practice in Nepal for almost three decades, we have now reached a stage where we at least have enough experts to take better care of the Medico-legal (ML) services in Nepal. From a handful to a crowd of nearly 40 adult experts, which is itself a national achievement, this is an example of how far our field has moved ahead with time. Judges and lawyers, SOCOs and other police personnel and officers, and MBBS students as well as graduates employed in the Health Service continue to be trained by various government and non-government bodies. But, are we anywhere even near THERE yet?
The latest milestone along this journey was that these 40 adult experts decided to help lighten the “dilemma-producing-non-scientific-evidence” workload of the stake holders of criminal-justice system by giving birth to MeLeSon, the Medico-Legal Society of Nepal. All of us working at different medical colleges all around Nepal then departed with a promise to establish an autopsy and ML examination centre in private medical colleges where we work, keeping in mind the disheartening quality of services provided in government hospitals next door.
The forensic manpower that we at the Kathmandu Medical College have is certainly adequate to start a ML centre where medical students can achieve firsthand knowledge on the dead teaching the living. But regarding the necessary space for such a step, we are worse off than the MMC, IOM itself. But the journey continues. The KMC will have such a center in Duwakot, Bhaktapur in the near future. Maybe we can have the Second General Assembly of MeLeSon there, to debate as to what progress we have made in the field that we have immersed ourselves in in the last two years.
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