Doctors fake degrees score reaches 38

After finding degrees of 31 ‘doctors’ and ‘dentists’ to be fake during verification over last one month, the Pakistan Medical and Dental Council (PMDC) has tracked down seven more individuals, including a woman, practising medicine in the country with fake or forged registration certificates. Ironically, some of them are serving in government-run health facilities.

Having struck names of these fake or forged degree-holders off the list of registered medical practitioners, the council has recommended strict action, which may be fine, imprisonment or both under the PMDC Ordinance 1962, by the executive district officers concerned against them.

Since its foundation in 1962, the PMDC has a proper department where those wanting to practice medicine and dentistry in the country submit their degrees and certificates for verification. Once the degrees are verified, the council formally allows doctors and dentists to practice.

In September 2009, the PMDC moved beyond its role of verifying degrees on receipt. In a bid to ensure lawful practice of medicine and dentistry, it wrote to the heads of the country’s all public and private healthcare facilities to send copies of the degrees and PMDC registration certificates of the doctors and dentists working under them for free verification.

A special ‘Central Verification Unit’ was also put in place to check genuineness of the medical and dental practitioners’ credentials submitted. And as the degrees and registration certificates began coming in though very late, the unit got functional and commenced scrutiny of the documents received.

In the process, the unit found many degrees and PMDC registration certificates to be fake or forged, prompting cancellation of their holders’ registration.

On April 23, names of five fake doctors including Qamar Elahi (Punjab), Ashraf Javed (Punjab), Muhammad Sikandar Hayat (Punjab), Kareem Bukhsh (Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa) and Muhammad Aslam (Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa) were removed from the PMDC register, while on June 7, registration of 26 more individuals was cancelled for their being in possession of foreign medical and dental degrees, mostly from Kyrgyzstan. Among these were Syed Kamal Raza (fake MD degree from Russia), Noman Gul (fake MD degree from Kyrgyz Republic), Nusrat Fatima (fake MD degree from Kyrgyz Republic), Jahanzeb (fake MD degree from Afghanistan), Navid Ahmad (fake MD degree from Kyrgyzstan), Shanul Haq (fake MD degree from Philippines), Adnan Aurangzeb (fake MD degree from Kazakhstan), Gul Nawaz Khan (fake MD degree from Kyrgyzstan), Mumtaz Shaukat (fake MD degree from Kyrgyzstan), Farooq Saleem Khan (without certificates), Sajad Ahmad (fake MD degree from Kyrgyzstan), Jamshed Sikandar (fake degree of sub course of medicine from Osh State University), Robina Anwar Shah (fake MD degree from Kyrgyzstan), Omar Jalal (fake MD degree from Russia), Faisal Shah (fake MD degree from Kyrgyzstan), Iftikhar Ahmad (fake MD degree from Kyrgyz Republic), Muhammad Zubair (fake MD degree from Afghanistan), Abdullah (fake MD degree from Kyrgyzstan), Muhammad Ishtiaq Saburi (fake MD degree from Kyrgyzstan), Noor Muhammad Khan (fake MD degree from Kyrgyzstan), Islam Khan (fake MD degree from Afghanistan), Shagufta Ambreen (fake MD degree from Kyrgyz Republic), Saghir Almas (fake MD degree from Kyrgyzstan), Rehan Israr (fake MD degree from Kyrgyzstan), Muhammad Awais (fake MD degree from Kyrgyzstan) and Muhammad Imran Aslam (fake MD degree from Kyrgyz Republic).

There followed a request by the council to Federal Investigation Agency for investigation against these fake doctors and dentists, who claimed to have obtained degrees between 2000 and 2006.

And now during the verification of the degrees sent in by the government’s health facilities and EDOs, the PMDC has found seven individuals practising medicine at private and government facilities while using either fake registration certificates or those issued to legal medical practitioners.

Documents available with this scribe show that the PMDC registration certificates of the following individuals are fake or forged: Nasir Mahmood s/o Muhammad Siddique of Wazirabad (Gujrat) (No 18586-S) currently working in Narowal; Iqtidar Hussain s/o Imdad Hussain of Orangi Town, Karachi (No 17603-S) currently working at a private hospital; Bibi Hajira d/o Bahader Sher of Bagh-e-Aram, Mardan (7642-N) currently working at People’s Primary Health Care Initiative’s District Support Unit Mardan; Zulqarnain Jahangir s/o Muhammad Jahanagir Gulshan-e-Iqbal, Rahim Yar Khan, (No 52346-P) currently working at Sheikh Zayed Hospital, Rahim Yar Khan; Anjum Zia s/o Ziuddin Warraich of Golarchi, Badin, (No 68979-5) currently running a private clinic in Golarchi, and Aamir Ali Siddiqui (No 34487-S) and Tariq Zaheer (No 28944-S) both working at Punjab Rural Support Programme’s District Support Unit, Pakpattan Sharif. The council has asked the EDOs concerned for appropriate legal action against the fake doctors identified.

Besides these cases, 42 doctors and dentists with suspicious degrees and registration certificates have also been found out. They have been asked by the council to re-submit attested copies of their documents along with two pictures for verification.

Registration numbers of the said doctors and dentists, whose names are not available, are 14927-N, 15575-N, 15661-N, 15724-N, 15751-N, 15865-N, 15868-N, 15918-N, 15940-N, 15948-N, 15988-N, 15387-N, 15412-N, 15422-N, 15438-N, 15440-N, 15441-N, 15445-N, 15446-N, 15447-N, 15448-N, 15449-N, 15452-N, 15560-N, 15491-N, 15493-N, 9033-D, 13075-N, 13115-N, 13125-N, 13144-N, 13357-N, 13432-N, 13451-N, 13456-N, 13476-N, 12095-N, 12287-N, 12310-N, 12332-N, 12332-N and 52003-P.

It is also learnt that the PMDC has developed an online degree registration system, which, according to an official, will help people know if doctors or dentists they consult are genuine and licensed and thus, checking quackery.

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