And, turning back now to Belizean criminals, life may be about to get much harder for them, once the National Forensic Science Service gets DNA testing online.
Now, that won't happen overnight, it's a process that's expected to take up to three years but work has already begun and this morning on Sunup when Executive Director of the NFSS, Gian Cho stopped by our studios with a panel of experts, they told us about the population genetic study that will lay the groundwork for DNA identification.
Jillian Conte, DNA Expert Consultant
"When I'm here next week and a little bit this week I am going to be working with Gian and the personnel in the front of the Biology portion of NFSS and helping them look at designing what is called a population genetics study so that is an important step to capture the genetic diversity in Belize as a whole and so using the 2010 census data to really understand the population in Belize and then designing an experiment to collect genetic samples from them and that's the first, one of the first steps I would say in being able to do DNA testing in the country in the coming years so this is laying the groundwork for that."
Gian Cho, Executive Director, Belize National Forensic, Science, Service
"That is one of our strategic priorities over the next two to three years, um, parallel to getting a new lab because we can't do DNA in the lab that we have right now but we won't wait until we have a new lab to start doing these foundational population studies and it really is going to build on I think a previous study was done somewhere near 2010, a researcher, a Belizean researcher, Ms Flores did an initial population study so it's kind of to add more data to widen the reach, widen the sample size for that. And eventually, we will use what we gather. The study and design of legislation which also takes a while. And so while we are waiting for the funds and the process of construction and training of staff we can be working on these more procedural systemic improvements in. Genetic studies and legislation design and consultation process, public consultation process because it has to do with issues of privacy retention of data. Etc."
