HALIFAX – The provincial government held a grand opening for a Halifax health clinic that treats refugees for free on Wednesday.
“It’s very timely that we’re getting this fully up and running,” said Leo Glavine, Minister of Health and Wellness, noting that the province is expected to accept more refugees in the coming months.
Currently, the province takes in 200-300 refugees a year.
“Refugees are a very special population in Canada from a health perspective,” said Dr. Tim Holland. “In a lot of cases, they’ve lived in refugee camps for years while abroad and, during that time, they may have faced very different disease burdens.”
The clinic provides care specialized for people who have been refugees. Doctors are trained to better deal with interpreters, and the sometimes unusual health problems refugees may face.
“Injuries from torture, foreign bodies that need to be removed from arms is just some of the most horrific things that Canadians will never have to imagine,” said Holland.
Some patients visit the clinic, located in the Mumford Professional Centre, without having ever had care as basic as a blood pressure test, he said.
The plan is to help clients integrate with the regular health care system within a two-year period of becoming a patient.
The clinic was previously opened in the spring of 2014 in an office space donated by the Immigrant Services Association of Nova Scotia. The Nova Scotia Health Authority partnered with the clinic to provide it with a nurse, administrative support, and a new space in the spring of 2015.
Alphonse Mutagoma fled the Democratic Republic of Congo with his family to a refugee camp in Uganda in 2009.
They moved to Canada this year and have struggled to find a family doctor. He has since used the clinic and said he was happy with the service.
“When we came to Canada, things were changed from zero to Z,” he said.
The clinic, which has nearly 200 patients, is currently open two days a week; the plan is to increase that to three days.
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