The Government of the Canary Islands promotes an agreement to train two technicians from the Doctor José Molina Orosa University Hospital to be able to perform autopsies as assistants in the event that the owner is on vacation from the Institute of Legal Medicine or a professional cannot travel from Gran Canaria.
The deputy of the Canarian Nationalist Parliamentary Group and president of the Cabildo of Lanzarote and La Graciosa, Oswaldo Betancort, has requested the signing of an agreement between the Island Corporation, the Ministry of the Presidency, Public Administrations, Justice and Security and the Canarian Health Service to cover the temporary vacancies of the forensic service in Lanzarote with hospital staff, until the staff that carries out the aforementioned service is expanded.
Betancort recalled during the plenary session in Parliament that the Delegation of the Institute of Legal Medicine and Forensic Sciences of Lanzarote (IMLCF) in Lanzarote depends on that of the province of Las Palmas and has only "one pathological anatomy technician", which causes the forensic service to be "uncovered when this worker is on vacation, days off or medical leave."
This circumstance, he explained, "causes our people to suffer uncertainty and eternal waits when receiving the bodies of their loved ones to watch over them and bury them, which adds more suffering to the loss of a loved one"; to which he added that "our duty as public servants is to eliminate bureaucratic obstacles, especially in these dramatic circumstances."
"To resolve this issue," added Oswaldo Betancort, "two paths are proposed: one in the long term, which would be "to increase the staff of pathological anatomy technicians in the province", which involves the modification or elaboration of a new list of job positions, with what this implies knowing what the times of the Administration are; and the second, in the short term, consisting of said agreement", whose signature he urged to be carried out before the summer holidays.
A question for which Barreto has been asked in the plenary session of Parliament by CC. Regarding the actions to be carried out to solve the problem of the forensic service in Lanzarote, she indicated that the agreement "is already in the legal services of the Ministry and will be signed soon." The Minister of the Presidency, Public Administrations, Justice and Security of the Government of the Canary Islands, Nieves Lady Barreto, has specified that two pathological anatomy technicians from the hospital will receive training in order to "not delay autopsies."
Approximately one thousand autopsies are performed annually in the province of Las Palmas, of which, in round numbers, 750 are carried out in Gran Canaria, 150 in Lanzarote and 100 in Fuerteventura, for which there is a staff of four pathological anatomy technicians that has recently been reinforced by the Ministry with another two more with contracts for accumulation of tasks, explained Betancort.
In addition, this Institute performs an average of 140 autopsies per year and, according to the Minister, "has the appropriate means to carry them out." The same agreement as in Lanzarote has also been proposed in the islands of La Palma and Fuerteventura.
