In the interest of alleviating social discrimination and providing equal medical service for everyone, the Ministry of Health and Welfare announced that it will provide free health examination for approximately 6,000 foreign wives. These are women who don’t yet have Korean citizenship, and therefore are not eligible for medical welfare such as medical insurance or medical care. The service was provided with cooperation from the Korea Association of Health Promotion,

This service will be conducted for 6 months, starting from the beginning of March, 2007 to end of September. Foreign wives that wish to receive this free health examination will need to bring their means of identification and free health examination application form (issued from the local health center) and visit the branches of the Korea Association of Health Promotion, or ask for its at-home examination service.

The examination will be in 9 parts: general(basic examination, blood pressure, height, weight), urine (glucose, protein, occult blood, etc), liver(GOT, GPT, etc), diabetes, hyperlipidemia, blood related disease, STD, AIDS, X-Ray (chest), heart rate and pap smear test.

The results of the test will be mailed to the applicant’s address within 15 days, those found to have health issue will be examined further and treated in local health center

Ministry of Health and Welfare have also taken every precaution to protect these women’s personal information, stressing that the health centers are not to use the information for anything other than the processing of their examination. Meanwhile, Korea Association of Health Promotion, who funded this entire project, will run a full assessment of this project, and contemplate on whether they will run expand this project further.

☞ Contact

Heath policy team 02) 2110-6296, 129 (without area code)
Department of health promotion, Korea Association of Health Promotion 2601-6145,2601-6145