A state-of-the-art Dental Clinic designed to augment dental healthcare and the clinical training of Dental Students, has been inaugurated at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) Hospital, in Kumasi.

The facility, according to the authorities, is a step further in the mission of the University Hospital to provide excellent healthcare to the people.

It comes at a time when facilities at the Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital (KATH), Ghana's second-largest health referral facility, were being overstretched, including the clinical training of Dental Students.

The new Dental Clinic has surgery units equipped with dental chairs, compromising all the vital components, dental X-rays, students' changing room, central sterile services department, among others.

Professor Mrs Rita Akosua Dickson, the Vice-Chancellor, KNUST, said dental and oral health remained an essential part of the overall health and wellbeing of the people.

Consequently, the University was focused on living up to its mandate to train the critical human resource needed to provide specialized services in that aspect of health, she observed.

The Vice-Chancellor said the University would not deviate from keeping to its standards in the academia and healthcare services.

Therefore, the Hospital should be assiduous in maintaining the status quo, working effectively with the Patient's Charter in mind.

"Let us see the Charter not only on the walls, but manifesting in the Hospital's deliverables," Prof. Mrs. Dickson stated.

She commended the Hospital staff for their resilience and dedicated services, particularly in the wake of the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic.

"The University is grateful to the workers for their courage and sense of professionalism during those difficult times," the Vice-Chancellor said.

Dr. Osei Wusu Ansah, Director, KNUST Health Services, acknowledged the vision of the authorities in siting the Dental Clinic at the Hospital, which served as the primary health facility for those living within the University's catchment area.

Prof. Oti Acheampong, an Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeon at the KATH, in an interview with the Ghana News Agency (GNA), on the sideline of the programme, said dentistry was hands-on.

Consequently, the new facility was necessary to boost the clinical training of Dental Students as they sought to deepen their knowledge and skills on the job, he argued.