The
Lagos State Government on Thursday commenced deoxyribo nucleic acid
(DNA) testing on family members and victims of Sunday’s crash involving
Dana Airline’s flight 992 in Lagos.
Already, samples have been taken from eight families for the test.
The Chief Medical Director of the Lagos
State University Teaching Hospital, Prof. Wale Oke, said the test was
needed to justify that all scientific processes of identifying bodies
had been concluded.
The DNA testing will also be conducted on the victims’ family members to establish the authenticity of their relationships.
Four to six weeks
The testing on all the bodies would take at
least four to six weeks. This is bound to exacerbate the worries of the
victims’ family members who had been eager to bury their dead.
All the 153 persons on board the plane, a
Boeing MD-83, died while the figure for the on-the-ground victims’ crash
in densely populated Iju-Ishaga suburb was yet to be determined.
Lagos said DNA testing must be conducted on
all the 153 bodies already recovered from the crash site, including the
97 said to be burnt beyond recognition, in order to ensure that the
right persons receive the bodies of the victims.
DNA is the fundamental building block for
an individual’s entire genetic makeup. In identifying the real relations
of the dead as in the present case, the testing team will take a sample
from the body to test for its DNA and see if it is close to that of the
family members.
The DNA testing will be conducted by the state pathological team headed by Prof. John Obafunwa.
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