No abstract

Gender determination is an important aspect of personal identification, which is often required in medicolegal practice. Many experts believe that there are finer and more epidermal ridges on the fingers of women as compared with men. However, it is important to establish numerical cut-off values in terms of ridge counts to facilitate the gender determination within a particular population. The present study was conducted in the Department of Forensic Medicine, SSR Medical College, Mauritius with the objective to describe the ridge density in the Indo-Mauritian population and to devise a numerical model which is capable of identifying the sex of an individual from this population on the basis of the ridge counts obtained from the corresponding finger prints. The study was focused on 200 healthy medical students (100 men and 100 women) within the age range of 20-30 years. Multivariate analysis of variance results shows a significant gender difference in the sense that women tend to have higher ridge density then men in the distal region of all 10 digits (F = 41.83, P ≤ 0.005). The maximum mean ridge density over all fingers in men (12.26∼12) is less than the minimum mean ridge density over all fingers in women (12.71∼13). A linear discriminant function is derived from numerical modelling, which is used to predict (with a high reliability index, 0.92) the sex of the person whose fingerprints are obtained.

Road traffic injuries are the leading case of death worldwide. It is a real public health challenge for all the concerned agencies in reducing the number of road accidents. Road traffic accidents are becoming alarming in Mauritius and the present study was carried out to analyze the trends of fatal road traffic accidents in Mauritius from January 2006 to December 2011. The data was reviewed from the records of Traffic Management and Road Safety Unit, and the Ministry of Public Infrastructure, Land Transport and Shipping with ethics clearance obtained from the Ministry of Health and Quality of Life. A total of seven hundred and seventy seven (777) fatal road traffic accidents were reported during the study period. The road traffic accidents involving male drivers outnumbered those of female drivers. Most of the fatalities recorded occurred during weekends (35.26%), especially on Sundays. About half of the cases (51%) belonged to 16-44 years age group. Pedestrians and riders comprised of 63.4% of all the victims of fatal accidents. Given that young and productive males and females that can contribute the economic growth of a nation lose their lives unnecessarily in road traffic accidents, the outcome of this study can help the planners to take safety measures, to implement strict traffic rules, to risk stratification in the susceptible population and to educate the people regarding road safety measures.