by Isi Esene

Obafemi Awolowo University Teaching Hospital’s (OAUTH) Medical Director, Prof. Olusanya Adejuyigbe, said over the weekend that the hospital can now do DNA tissue tests.

The CMD said it could not assist in conducting a DNA test on the Dana crash victims because their bodies were burnt and there was no blood in them. He explained that the reagent utilized for tissue testing was not available then to conduct such tests.

He said: “But as you know, many of the victims of the Dana crash were burnt, and blood was not available. We were advised to get the reagent to perform DNA on the tissue. So we were restricted at the time because blood was not available and that was the common requirement either for paternity dispute or for tissue.

“Now we have that reagent and we are now able to do any form of DNA investigation. We might even go beyond that to do DNA sequencing, and that is the ultimate,” Adejuyigbe explained.

According to the Vanguard Newspapers, he went further to debunk claims by some healthcare providers in the country who claim they have facilities to conduct the tests saying some of them were “fronts for foreign agencies and all they do is collect specimens  for onward submission to their principal companies abroad where the real tests take place.

Good news, certainly.