Korle-Bu to conduct DNA tests from May 24

CID overwhelmed by cases
Page 51: Daily Graphic, Nay 20, 2010.
Story: Albert K. Salia
THE Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital will, from Monday, May 24, 2010, begin conducting human identification (DNA) tests.
That will make Ghana the second country after South Africa to have the capacity to carry out DNA tests on the continent.
The €178,000 molecular biology laboratory for the DNA chromosomal analysis will be manned by one of only two Ghanaian qualified and licensed biomedical scientists, Mr Augustine E. Sagoe.
The other Ghanaian is in South Africa, where he has been practising since he was licensed six years ago.
Even before it starts operations, the Korle-Bu DNA Paternity Centre, which is located in the Central Medical Laboratory building, has received more than 112 cases from the courts, individuals and medical practitioners.
The operation of the centre is seen as a major boost to making the nation’s premier hospital a one-stop health centre for the handling of all complicated cases.
Mr Sagoe told the Daily Graphic that the centre had also been registered and accepted internationally to make its findings acceptable to all institutions in the world.
He said it would also be used for DNA shuffling and library construction for criminal record keeping purposes and also to trace the genealogy of persons seven generations back.
He said the facility would make it easier to determine the history of medical conditions as to whether they ran through families or were by accident.
Throwing more light on the facility, Mr Sagoe said a survey he conducted at the courts in 2004 showed that there were a number of unresolved cases because DNA tests needed to be conducted to confirm certain findings before judgements could be given were not available.
Some of those cases, he said, involved rape and family issues.
According to him, the facility had been inundated with a large number of requests since the news broke last year that the hospital was to start running DNA services.
He said the analyser would also be of immense benefit to parents with hermaphrodite children to determine the dominant sex while they were young, since surgery would make it possible for such children to grow up to become ‘normal’ adults.
Mr Sagoe explained that the hospital had to add an equipment called Real Timer Polymerise Chain Reactor (PCR), a new technology used to amplify and simultaneously quantify a targeted DNA molecule, explaining that its late arrival had delayed the installation process.
He, however, said all was now set for the commencement of work at the centre.
The Daily Graphic, in its August 26, 2009 edition, broke the news of the setting up of a DNA Paternity Centre at the nation’s premier hospital.