Illegal abortion clinic, 8 others shut down in Kumasi

The Health Facility Regulatory Agency (HeFRA) has shut down a clinic in Kumasi suspected to be carrying out illegal abortions.

The Lake Road Clinic is part of nine facilities that were closed down by the agency.

The exercise is aimed at ensuring that facilities comply with the standards of delivering quality health services to the public.

The nine facilities which were closed down were found to be unlicensed, with some employees not trained in the health sector.

The Registrar for HeFRA, Dr Philip Bannor, indicated that the exercise was not geared toward ruining Ghanaian businesses but ensuring quality delivery of health care.

“We’re not doing this because we have some interest in closing some people’s businesses down.

“That is not our interest at all, in fact, we want to see more people attracted or engaged in the healthcare sector. We want more private participation but at the same time, we want to make sure that we adhere to quality standards.

“We want to promote quality, that’s what all this is about. You don’t want to go have a scan in a place, where the place is unlicensed. We don’t know what kind of equipment they’re using, we don’t even the quality of the imaging they’re giving to you and who’s even doing the interpretation of the images that they capture,” Dr Bannor stated.

HeFRA, through its intelligence, was notified that the Lake Road Clinic was conducting abortions illegally and performing other procedures without the required licence.

The team, during their inspection of the clinic, discovered unhygienic and unregistered medical equipment used for surgical procedures while the personnel offering the medical services were not licensed.

Dr Bannor noted: “We saw several equipment that seemed to be used but have not been washed or cleaned. We saw the operating table and the state it was in. It wasn’t in the best of shape.

“We didn’t meet the doctor that works there but the people that were picked didn’t have a licence to say they were nurses or whatever.”

Also, at the Mediscience Laboratory at Bantama, although the owner of the facility claimed to have the requisite qualification he failed to make his documents available to the team.

At the Ben Will facility, the facility claimed to be undergoing the necessary procedure to acquire a licence, it was however shut down.

Other facilities shut down include Osbon Diagnostics, Sonoscan Diagnostic Centre, Focus Medical Diagnostics, Krispat Hearing Centre, De-Castro Home Care and Echoscan Diagnostics Centre.