The Headquarters of the Ghana Immigration Service (GIS) has extended a clinic facility on its premises to provide quality and enhanced healthcare to its officers and key stakeholders who are mainly foreigners.
The clinic, which was commissioned in 2017, was aimed at providing healthcare for the gallant officers and staff of the GIS in Accra.
With the expansion, the clinic will now provide medical examinations to immigrants who enter the country to check various kinds of disease and take precautions where necessary.
This would ensure that Ghanaian citizens as well as the immigration officers who are in close contact with these foreigners are protected.
In a short ceremony organised last Friday to open the facility, the Minister for Interior, Mr Ambrose Derry, who commissioned the clinic in 2017 said he was very happy that it has served that purpose since its commissioning.
He noted that the clinic, apart from providing free healthcare to officers and staff of GIS, also caters for GIS officers on retirement, which is very encouraging.
He also noted that he was extremely happy that the basic healthcare of officers and staff of GIS is being catered for, because it is in consonance with President Akufo-Addo’s wish of ensuring that the GIS is well catered for in terms of healthcare.
He said that he looks forward to a future where the Service would own its healthcare facility to cater for the needs of its people and the customers it serves.
He encouraged management to open similar clinics in the other regions to enable GIS personnel’s over there also enjoy quality medical services.
He also noted that health services at various ports in the country are not well established and charged management to do well to recruit appropriate personnel that would be able to check the health status of people who are allowed into the country especially in this Covid-19 era.
He observed that Ghana would be overwhelmed with foreigners when borders are opened hence the need to recruit the appropriate personnel to discharge such duties in order not to endanger the lives of Ghanaians.
The Acting Chief Executive Officer of St. John’s Hospital and Fertility Center, Maame Yaa Afriyie also expressed her joy at the expansion of the clinic. She said this was because it would help to examine more foreigners who enter the country.
She indicated that there are immigrants in the country who have various kinds of diseases including the deadly HIV and the hospital is there to serve as a check on them to ensure that they are complying with rules and regulations regarding persons with such diseases.
She said that aim is not to stigmatise them but to ensure that they don’t infect citizens in the country with the disease.
“So the clinic checks all these, so that if a foreigner enters the country with such a disease then a limited number of work permit is given to theperson. All theseare to ensure that our citizens don’t get infected with all kinds of diseases by foreigners”
She indicated that plans are far advanced to ensure that the clinic set up a lab and acquire machines to test immigrants who will be coming into the country when the borders are opened to guard against Covid-19.
The post GIS clinic expanded for effective healthcare delivery appeared first on The Chronicle Online.
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