UAE Ministry of Health opens 8 new residency medical examination centres

The Ministry of Health and Prevention (MoHAP) has decided to increase the number of medical examination centres for residency from 10 to 18, to enhance the services provided in light of the heavy turnout by the ministry’s clients.

The number of beneficiaries from the services provided by these centres reached 752,000 in 2018, considering that each transaction is done in a record time of just seven minutes. This led to an increase in the customer happiness index to 83 per cent, amid expectations of a further increase, with the opening of three new centres in October. These were two in Sharjah and one in Fujairah.

Dr Hussein Abdel-Rahman Al-Rand, Under-Secretary of the ministry’s Health Assistant Sector, Health Centres and Clinics, said, "At MoHAP, we focus on the customer-centric services. For that reason, we are expanding our network centres and adding new services to provide medical examinations for residency."

"These new centres are forming an important addition to our sophisticated medical services, as part of MoHAP’s strategy aiming to provide comprehensive and integrated healthcare services as per the highest standards of excellence. In that sense, MoHAP has launched a large-scale workshop with a view to establishing eight new medical examination centres, two of them in Sharjah, Ras Al Khaimah, Fujairah and one centre in Ajman and Umm Al Quwain," Al-Rand added.

"New technologies have been added, such as Artificial Intelligence, AI. Also, a new programme is being tested that helps in obtaining an accurate and quick diagnosis of pulmonary tuberculosis for expatriates and residents to immunise our society against infectious diseases. The screening accuracy ratio of this programme is around 98 per cent. On another note, the duration of the regular screening was three minutes, however, after applying the AI technology, the time was reduced to only 0.1 second in each case. The new programme is currently available at the examination centres of Al Kuwait Hospital, Dubai and medical examination centres at Ibn Battuta Mall, and it will be circulated at MoHAP’s centres in the near future," Al Rand noted.

The services offered by the medical examination centres for residency vary from printing residence visa forms, medical examination and issuance of UAE ID card (Preventive Medicine Departments only). The client must provide a copy of the individual's documents, including a valid passport, valid visa or residence permit, two passport photos, a valid Emirates ID (only applicable for individuals renewing their residence permit).

WAM