Pakistan's Fake Doctors

(Rawalpindi, Pakistan) This report is disconcerting.

SOME 70,000 quacks with bogus medical degrees are said to be endangering lives across the country. But the recent news of a fake doctors’ recruitment scam at the District Headquarters Hospital in Rawalpindi raises new concerns about the infiltration of such charlatans into our public healthcare institutions.

Several senior health officials have already been arrested for the hiring of at least four people — three of them brothers — whose medical certificates were found to be bogus. One was taken on by the hospital as a neurosurgeon no less.

Even with the nation's population about 176 million, the number of phony Pakistani doctors is unacceptable. Also disturbing is the possibility that bogus doctors from Pakistan may be practicing in other countries.

[Add.] As a data point, a recent report from the Museum of London estimates that there are 7,000 Pakistani doctors practicing in the British National Health Service (NHS).