Officials of the Medical and Dental Council have apprehended a man they suspect to be operating a clinic at Kotobabi, a suburb of Accra, without licence.
The supposed medical doctor, identified as Charles Acquah, according to officials of the council, is not a registered member of the council and so not qualified to attend to patients. However, he was spotted in his clinic attending to patients.
He was arrested with the help of the Kotobabi police last Wednesday afternoon to assist in investigation.
The registrar of the Medical and Dental Council, Dr. Eli Kwasi Atikpui, who briefed the media, said during the latter part of December, 2017, the council had information that there was a man by name Charles Acquah who was practising as a medical doctor at a clinic (name withheld) at Kotobabi.
With the details of the said medical doctor given, investigators of the council were tasked to crosscheck information on him in their database.
Dr. Atikpui said their investigation established that the said Charles Acquah had his medical school training at the M. Gorky Donestk National Medical University and later transferred in the sixth year to the Ivano-Frankivsk National Medical University – both in Ukraine – and completed in June, 2015.
“Further checks revealed that the said Acquah had been registered as a physician assistant by the council in the year 2011, but never renewed his licence.
Sometime in 2015, Acquah showed up at the council to register for the October 2015 examination for foreign trained doctors but failed in the exams,” Dr Atikpui disclosed.
He said Acquah again took part in the October 2016 and November 2017 examinations conducted by the council, and failed both again.
“He was supposed to have come for an introductory letter to an accredited hospital for an attachment for a period of six months before he is allowed to write another examination, but had failed to do so,” the registrar posited.
He claimed that on January 22, 2018, a team was dispatched to locate the facility where Acquah was operating; and it was established that he was the same person who took the examinations as a foreign-trained doctor and failed. He was subsequently nabbed.
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