Due to lack of jobs for forensic doctors, they become cab drivers

Santo Domingo, DR
The country has about 150 forensic doctors who graduated in this specialty, equivalent to about one for every 800 thousand inhabitants, whose insufficiency is aggravated by the fact that barely 30% are appointed in the Public Prosecutor’s Office and the health sector.

Meanwhile, 70% of the doctors who graduated in this specialty and invested four years of their life are unemployed; some of them are driving cabs, selling vegetables in the market, doing electrical work, practicing in another medical branch, doing some other entrepreneurship and some dedicated to homemakers, despite the high requirement of these services that the country has.

The reality was exposed when interviewed by Listin Diario, the director of the Dominican Society of Forensic Medicine, Candido Jimenez, president, and Jairo Medrano, legal advisor.

They affirm that since 2007 they have been tired of asking for the appointment of this personnel to be able to respond faster to the population, but that up to now, their claims have not been listened to.

Ideally, they explain, there should be one forensic doctor for every 100,000 or 150,000 inhabitants to provide timely attention to the population, who often complain about the delay at the time of the removal of a corpse or the waiting time for the results of an autopsy.

They added that each hospital should have a forensic doctor appointed. Still, only the La Altagracia and San Lorenzo de los Mina maternity hospitals, the Darío Contreras, Luis Eduardo Aybar, and Padre Billini hospitals in Greater Santo Domingo, the Antonio Musa hospital in San Pedro de Macorís and the Juan Pablo Pina hospital in San Cristóbal have such personnel assigned to them.

They recalled that these specialists are in charge of auditing the deaths that occur in the hospitals, those of epidemiological surveillance, both of a viral nature as well as maternal and infant mortality, among others.

Meeting with Abinader

So doctors Jimenez and Medrano took advantage of this space to ask for an urgent interview with President Luis Abinader to explain the sector’s needs to him.

The specialists assure that they have requested the appointment of forensic doctors to all the health authorities who have led the country since its creation in 2007, but no one has given them an answer. “We are convinced that only an interview with President Abinader is what will resolve this deficit,” said Jimenez.

The Society of Forensic Medicine leaders said that this week they felt a lot of sadness when the Ministry of Public Health and the National Health Service (SNS) announced the creation of new positions in different medical specialties, but forensic medicine was not included.