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The Trust Hospital Company Limited has unveiled its new Deoxyribonucleic Acid (DNA) paternal testing equipment at the Trust Specialist Hospital at Osu. The new equipment, which is the first to be established in a private hospital in West Africa and second in the African region, would provide services in genetic paternity testing for the public. The hospital has been positioned with the new machine to provide services in DNA fingerprinting, forensic DNA proofing, short tandem repeat, lineage markets, ancestry informative markets, forensic DNA database, and privacy rights. It would also among other things enable requestors to confirm biological paternity between the alleged father and the child for their own knowledge. The General Manager (Medical) of the hospital, Dr Darius Kofi Osei, briefing the media on the installation of the new equipment, said DNA testing is currently the most advanced and accurate technology to determine parentage. �Today, highly accurate genetic paternity testing has become a possibility,� he said. Dr Osei further noted that with the new DNA test that the hospital had acquired, companies and especially laboratories as well as individual requestors would not have to travel abroad for this kind of service. �It therefore becomes the most convenient and cost effective option in Ghana,� he said. The General Manager assured the public of timely services with requestors receiving their results within 24 hours due to the efficiency of the machine and the skills and rich knowledge of the staff that use the facility. He said the hospital would work with the medical, law enforcement and legal fields to assist a mother in getting child support from the biological father of a child assist a biological father in gaining access to his child and to resolve a child custody matter. �We will also work to prove a relationship between a beneficiary and petitioner to support an immigration petition, to prove a relationship between a deceased individual and alleged biological relatives in an estate dispute and to obtain death benefits for a child as part of an insurance claim,� he said. Ernest Thompson, Acting Director General of Social Security and National Insurance Trust (SNNIT) addressing the media said the opening of the new facility marked another milestone in the history of the hospital that has the vision of delivering quality and affordable healthcare service to its employees and the general public. He said the hospital which started as a clinic had grown into many satellite hospitals in Tema, Osu, Dome, Dansoman and the SNNIT pension House in Accra. Mr Thompson said apart from the facility being a good avenue for healthcare, it was also part of the fulfillment of the strategy of SNNIT to provide social protection for people. �I hope this machine will be maintained like the other machines,� he noted. The Trust Specialist Hospital was incorporated in November, 2010 as a non-for-profit healthcare centre to provide healthcare services for staff and their dependants but later upgraded into a fully-fledged hospital to extend its services to the general public.