Oman's health ministry issues new rule for some expat medical examinations

Muscat: The Sultanate will not accept the medical examinations of expats from Kenya and Uganda, unless they have been issued by GCC-accredited medical centres, the Ministry of Health announced on Wednesday.
According to officials, the new decision will be effective from October 7, 2018.
In a statement, the Ministry said, “The Ministry of Health announced that the Sultanate will not accept any medical examinations of expatriates from Kenya and Uganda, unless issued by GCC-accredited medical centres of the respective countries, effective from October 7, 2018. The list of the accredited centres is available at www.gcchmc.org.”
The number of Ugandan expat workers in Oman increased by 30 per cent in June 2018 compared with December 2017 last year, the highest rise among expatriate groups in the Sultanate.
This comes at a time when many expats are leaving the Sultanate due to the economic downturn and fewer are coming in due to the visa ban that applies to certain professions.
At the end of December 2017, there were 24,449 Ugandan nationals, which increased to 31,945 in June. The overwhelming majority of them are women at 31,595, while only 350 are men.
Observers pointed out that this is largely due to the number of Ugandan women workers flying into the country.
In the recent past, Asian countries had put in place a lot of regulations, as far as hiring of housemaids in the Gulf region was concerned. Notably, this is not the case with Uganda and other African nations.