Clinic 4 KNUST students

THE authorities of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) have provided a special students’ clinic to help boost health delivery on campus.
The Director of the University Health Services, Dr Yaw Bio, said the clinic would provide services solely for students to enable them go about their studies peacefully.
He said students, as well as staff of the university, had not been able to receive prompt medical attention, especially during the morning peak hours, as a result of the congestion at the Out-patients Department (OPD) of the University Hospital.
He said a health facility to cater solely for students, therefore, could not be overemphasised.
At the inauguration of the clinic on Monday, Dr Bio said the University Hospital, which was built in 1952 as a dressing station to cater for the then university community of less than 3,000, had only grown by additions and modifications into a fully-fledged 100-bed hospital.
He said the university community had grown in leaps and bounds to a population of about 150,000, with a student population of 21,000, not to mention the ever-growing surrounding communities, yet not a single addition or expansion had been made to the original hospital facility.
Dr Bio said OPD attendance at the hospital kept escalating.
“We had 85,000 in 2005 and 92,000 in 2006, with 26,000 out of the total figure being students,” he said.He said the students’ clinic would not be isolated but become a real appendage to the main hospital, explaining that the clinic would run from Monday to Friday.
The Vice-Chancellor of the university, Professor K. K. Adarkwa, who inaugurated the clinic, said an old building was refurbished at the cost of ¢200 million for the clinic.
He said the current student population of more than 22,000, coupled with the over 3,000 staff and their dependants, as well as those from the surrounding communities, made it necessary for the provision of a special clinic for only students.
He advised students to be patient whenever they visited the clinic for treatment and also treat the health personnel there with the utmost respect, courtesy and dignity.