Local professionals involved with determining the cause of deaths in Greater Sudbury and area have been given a brand new, state-of-the-art facility to work in.
The new Northeastern Regional Forensic Pathology Unit was officially opened on Thursday, June 14 at the Sudbury Regional Hospital's Laurentian site.
“It was time for Sudbury Regional to extend its capabilities beyond simply healing minds and bodies,” said hospital CEO Vickie Kaminski.
The total cost of the unit was approximately $600,000.
With the opening of the new forensic pathology unit, Greater Sudbury and the rest of northeastern Ontario will have the capabilities needed to be almost entirely self-contained.
“This will significantly lessen the time a body is being investigated on and the travel time that came from having to send bodies to Toronto. This will have great benefits for the citizens of Sudbury... funeral arrangements will be much less time consuming,” said Barry McLellan, Ontario's Chief Coroner.
“Compared to the old morgue, anything would do,” joked Dr. Martin Queen, lead forensic pathologist for the hospital.
Queen was asked to be the first full-time forensic pathologist in Sudbury years ago when the facility was more a hurdle than a blessing and was unaffectionately named “the root cellar”.
The new forensic unit will also aid police and fire services in their investigations and expand Sudbury's regional role in forensic investigations.
“It is important for the families of the deceased to have confidence in the quality of forensic pathology in Northern Ontario,” said Queen.
The new facility is also important because forensic work requires space and adequate ventilation. Having ready access to the radiology department is another huge advantage of moving the unit to the Laurentian site.
The forensics department is now large enough to accommodate students of Laurentian and it will soon be mandatory for medical students to observe at least one postmortem examination.
Autopsies at the forensic pathology unit are performed in the event of a suicide, accidental or sudden death or at the the request of the family to determine the cause of death.
