Police grab fake plastic surgeon operating in a hotel room

A foreign national parading as a plastic surgeon in the country is in the grips of the Police for practicing as a medical doctor in Ghana without a license, ABC News can report.

Dr. Torngee Jospeh Malu, whose country of origin is yet to be made public, is said to have converted his hotel room at the Labadi Beach Hotel in Accra into a consulting room where he reportedly attended to clients.

Dr Malu, who portrays himself as a plastic surgeon and a liposuction expert, had prior to arriving into the country taken to social media to announce his coming.

He and his accomplices were subsequently arrested when the Police got wind of his illegal operations in the hotel room.

Reacting to the incident, the Registrar of the Medical and Dental Council, Dr. Eli Atikpui indicated that non-Ghanaian nationals who want to practice medicine in Ghana must follow due process.

He said it was mandatory for all foreign nationals to obtain licenses from the appropriate authorities in Ghana before they can practice medicine regardless they obtaining licenses from their countries of origin.

He described as illegitimate, the alleged conversion of a hotel room into a consulting room by the said doctor, stressing that “there are approved facilities so it is not any place that consultations can be done.”

“This is an individual who is practising medicine without registering with the Medical and Dental Council. In the first place, we do not know whether he is a doctor. Medicine is not practised anywhere. There are approved facilities so it is not any place that consultations can be done. And if that facility is approved, it has to be accredited by the Health Facility Regulatory Authority. But for an individual to check into a hotel and convert his hotel room into a consulting room, it breaches the law,” he said in an interview monitored by ABC News.

The invasion of unlicensed medical doctors, most of whom operate in secrecy in several parts of the country, has been an issue of concern as they pose a serious threat to the country’s health system.

In July this year, a 62-year-old fake doctor was arrested by the Accra Central District Police for allegedly practicing as a medical doctor without legal authority and aborting pregnancies from a house at Okaishie in Accra.

His arrest followed the death of a 19-year-old girl who died shortly after she had allegedly patronised the services of the fake doctor to get rid of an unwanted pregnancy.

It is against such illicit practices that the Medical and Dental Council in 2018 issued a decree, directing all medical practitioners to carry a mandatory practitioner’s stamp bearing their name and number.

The Council said this measure was to ensure easy identification of licensed medical practitioners by patients and to help nip the issue of fake medical practitioners in the bud.