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Mozambique: Fake Doctor Arrested in Maputo
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Agencia de Informacao de Mocambique (Maputo)
14 May 2008
Posted to the web 14 May 2008
Maputo
The Mozambican police have arrested a man who passed himself off for the past three years as a gynaecologist, but in fact had no medical qualifications whatever.
29 year old Nelson Bata is a mechanic, yet he managed to work as a doctor in health units, including Maputo Central Hospital, until he was unmasked on Monday.
He was only found out when his wife, Isa, accused him of domestic violence. When he went to the police station to give a statement, he was still pretending to be a gynaecologist, but his wife told the police his true identity
He confessed to reporters that he was no doctor at all, but that this had been no obstacle to him attending to patients. He had lost count of the number of women he had seen and advised. He provided some of his patients with drugs that he simply took from the hospital pharmacy.
One member of the pharmacy staff, Bernardo Mulhanga, told the police that he provided the drugs because he believed Bata was a doctor. Bata's confidence and apparent knowledge was such that Mulhanga never suspected he was a swindler.
Bata also sought patients outside the hospital, and charged them money for consultations, passing himself off as a specialist who had trained in Europe. But he would send difficult cases to genuine doctors, giving his would-be patients the excuse that he was "too busy" to treat them.
Asked how he managed to move around so freely in the central hospital and in other health units, Bata said that he had friends in the health service, including a real doctor, who was once a schoolmate of his in the central province of Sofala. This doctor, named as Celsio Joaquim, provided Bata with facilities, including a medical uniform. It is possible that Joaquim did not realize that his old school friend had never set foot in a medical faculty.
Asked by the independent television station, STV, how it was possible for a fake doctor to go undetected for years, the management of the central hospital could give no answer, but promised to investigate the case.
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Several of Bata's patients, who paid for treatment that was no use, are now demanding their money back.
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| Copyright © 2008 Agencia de Informacao de Mocambique. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections -- or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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