Interior Minister inaugurates upgraded GIS clinic

The Minister of the Interior, Ambrose Dery yesterday inaugurated an extended health facility for the Ghana Immigration Service (GIS) Clinic at the headquarters of the GIS in Accra.

The facility has three consulting rooms, a laboratory to be fitted with medical machinery, including mammogram for breast cancer diagnosis as well as prostate cancer diagnosis.

Aside from the free healthcare to officers of the Service in the Greater Accra Region, the facility would now serve retirees, while plans were afoot to have it opened to the general public.

“What is also exciting about this is that, you are going to be given care for free; and it’s not only when you are in service, it’s also extended to immigration officers on retirement,” Mr Dery said at the ceremony attended by immigration stakeholders.

He urged the management of the GIS to extend the opening and operation of clinics to other regions in the country to enable the officers to access health care within the GIS facilities and also recruit the right personnel to manage them.

“I an encouraging management to open similar clinics in the other regions to enable service personnel to in those regions to get medical services,” Mr Dery stated.

“The Ghana Immigration service should do well to recruit the appropriate personnel that will enable them to be able to check the health status of people”.

Mr Dery also mentioned that the extension health facility was in line with President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo’s commitment to ensuring that personnel in the security services and other workers in the country were well taken care of.

For his part, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Saint John’s Hospital and Fertility Centre, partners for the construction of the GIS clinic explained that the extended facility would provide healthcare services to immigrants, immigration officers and the general public.

“The essence of the extension is to provide immigrants who are already in the country with medical examinations, give protection to the citizens of the country as well as immigration officials,” he stated.

The project is a public-private-partnership involving the Saint John’s Hospital and Fertility Centre who would set up the laboratory for operation.

The GIS inaugurated its first ever clinic in March 2017 by the Interior Minister at the thanksgiving ceremony of the Service to provide free healthcare for its personnel.