Characteristics of deceased and quality of death certificates for cases subjected to Indonesia's management of the dead protocol for bodies with COVID-19.

The COVID-19 pandemic has significantly impacted many aspects of life, including death care. International and national protocols have been implemented for the management of the dead. This study aims to determine the characteristics of decedents managed according to COVID-19 protocols in Indonesia and the quality of their death certificates. This study uses a descriptive, cross-sectional design. Secondary data of deaths with COVID-19 were taken from hospital death registries, medical records, and death certificates. Data were collected from nine referral hospitals and one funeral home in 6 cities in Indonesia. The majority of the decedents were male, Muslim, with a median age of 57. Most were treated in non-intensive isolation wards, and almost half had known comorbidities. Many were still awaiting the result of their confirmative PCR at the time of death. Almost all were managed compliant with the standard protocol, and most were buried in COVID-only cemeteries. There were still deficiencies in the completeness and accuracy of the death certificates. "COVID-19" was mentioned as a cause of death in only about half of the cases, with a wide variety of terms and spelling. Management of the dead protocols for bodies with COVID-19 can generally be implemented in Indonesia. The quality of the death certificates should, however, be continuously improved.

Under the lens: Dental expert witnesses in Brazil, Croatia, Indonesia, Italy, Saudi Arabia, and the United Kingdom.

The dentists' main job is to restore health and function to the oral cavity. However, dental professionals can also be involved in medico legal activities as forensic odontologists or by being Expert Witnesses (EW) to testify in professional liability cases, car accidents and work-related injuries. When called to act as an expert witness by the Court, the appointed dentist has to combine both biological and technical knowledge with equivalent medico-legal and forensic knowledge. Spontaneous involvement in medico-legal matters without an adequate training and experience can lead to mistakes with irreversible consequences. As an expert witness, the dentist has precise responsibility with civil and/or penal consequences, depending on the national judicial system. Dental Expert Witness, working either privately or appointed by the Court, has defined responsibilities and is subjected to civil or criminal proceedings (depending on the judicial system) if found wanting. Keeping in mind that there are significant differences regarding the requirements of becoming eligible to be a Dental Expert Witness in different legal systems. In this work the authors investigated the Judicial Systems regarding the appointment of Dental Expert Witnesses in Brazil, Croatia, Indonesia, Italy, Saudi Arabia and the United Kingdom (Table 1), in order to marshal knowledge towards harmonization and the attainment of best practice. This premise acknowledges the fact that forensic odontology must encompass the necessity for robust systems of audit and accreditation for it to be accepted as an "evidence based" forensic discipline. Further steps to ensure quality assurance in legal dentistry and forensic odontology training should be considered to prevent the spontaneous involvement of inappropriately trained dentists to become involved in making decisions that are beyond their competence and expertise.

Allele frequency of CODIS 13 in Indonesian population.

Since the first application of DNA technology in 1985 in forensic cases, and the acceptance of this technology in 1988 at court, the DNA typing is widely used in personal identification, parentage cases and tracing the source of biological samples found in the crime scene. The FBI on 1990 had recommended the forensic labs to used 13 loci of Short Tandem Repeats (STR), known as CODIS 13, as the loci of choice for forensic use. The research on the population DNA database on these loci is extremely important for calculating the Paternity Index as well as Matching Probability for forensic application of DNA technology. As many as 402 unrelated persons, consisted of 322 from western part of Indonesia and 80 from eastern part of Indonesia, were chosen as the respondents of this research, after signing the informed consent. The peripheral blood sample was taken using sterile lancets and dropped onto FTA classic cards. The DNA was extracted by FTA purification solution (3x) and TE(-1) (2x), and amplified by PCR mix, either Cofiler or Profiler Plus (Perkin Elmers), followed by sequencing using ABI Prism type 3100 Avant Genetic Analyzer. The analysis showed that the alleles frequencies of Indonesian is specific, different with the other Asian populations with some specific alleles and microvariant were found.