A talk by Dr Dani Osborn on Disaster Victim Identification

Our speaker on 11 September was Danielle Osborn. She is a Health Emergency Management Consultant. After leaving the Royal Navy in 2006, she undertook a  Masters in Emergency Planning and Disaster Management studying the field of response and recovery, and then went to do practical work in that field in central London for Islington Borough Council and then at Addenbrooke's Hospital in Cambridge. In 2018 Danielle joined forces with Professor Lucy Easthope, a leader in the Disaster Response field. Together they wrote a paper entitled "Identification of the Incapacitated Patient in Mass Casualty Events". In summary, this explored the challenges, solutions, and barriers to identifying living, but incapacitated, patients (such as paediatric patients and those in shock) during a mass casualty event. They argued that while significant focus is placed on Disaster Victim Identification (DVI) for the deceased, the identification of living, incapacitated, victims is a growing concern that has led to mistaken identification methods being used by Interpol in past incidents where reliance has been placed on the proximity of personal effects to victims, and visual identification. Their research examined the applicability of established identification methods for the dead to the living, considering the medicolegal implications and highlighting the need to broaden DVI processes to include living casualties who are unable to provide their own identity.  In 2020 she completed her PhD thesis entitled 'Identification of the incapacitated patient in mass casualty events: an examination of challenges, barriers and solutions'. Her research has led her to reach the following conclusions –

● Victim Identification: Visual and personal effects are not acceptable as a primary source of ID

● Identification of critically injured needs to be a priority over the ID of the deceased.

● Consideration needs to be given to who carries out the role and how they are deployed in the initial stages.

● These areas need more awareness and training.

● There are serious consequences for failing to act appropriately.

A dead body does not belong to anyone, and has no legal rights of its own. Whilst it is assumed that visual identification is satisfactory, the use of photographs or personally viewing a body can be inaccurate. Human error leads to cases of mistaken identity, which can be very distressing for the families of the victims involved. The use of scientific identification methods, triangulating fingerprints, dental records and DNA, alongside visual identification is the only way to 100% confirm an individual's identity. However this requires the accurate accumulation of ante-mortem samples (from family member/dentists and so on) to use alongside the samples collected from the unknown individual. A tricky undertaking if you don’t know who they are in the first place! There are also the added complications surrounding consent, privacy and the potential claims of assault against the person in the retrieval of these samples - yet there is an overriding need to achieve 100% accuracy when reuniting a victim with their family. The result is that it can take longer than you would wish to complete the identification process - in one particular case in Danielle’s research, it took over 5 weeks to accurately identify a young lady who had been mistakenly identified as another young lady who had died at the scene. (see the photo of Laura Van Ryn and Whitney Cerak, USA 2006 below) Two examples of the wrong identification were given – both heart-wrenching for the families involved. From what she told us, there seems to be an unwillingness amongst the relevant professionals to tackle the issues highlighted above. In support of that contention she mentioned to us that when in 2010 she warned the hospital authorities at Addenbooke's about the need to prepare for a pandemic, as per the UK Risk Register, she was told by many of the medical professionals that 'it's never going to happen'.

Apart from her academic and professional work, Danielle is married and has two children. She has also qualified for Team GB in her age category for Pentathlon.