Click to play videoThey are supposed to be the pillars of any civil society. You trust them with your life during emergencies and they are under oath to save human lives at any cost.
But what if the friendly doctor treating you or your loved ones is a fraud? What if he has multiple cases of fraud registered against him and is operating on a fake degree?
Sounds scary? Well, that’s the reality in a number of hospitals across India.
CNN-IBN's Special Investigation Team (SIT) decided to expose the dirty side of doctors.
Using the Government's Right to Information tool, SIT found out just how many people are currently working as doctors in many top hospitals of the country when the Medical Council of India (MCI) does not even recognise their MBBS degrees — the MCI has a record of all registered doctors in India.
The SIT also filed an RTI application to find out how many doctors with fraudulent foreign degrees had been detected in the last 15 years. The answer was a large one — 53 doctors on the list.
The doctors are fakes and the Government knows this, so the natural question that comes up is: Why are doctors with fake certificates being allowed to practice when the laws in our country are absolutely explicit?
CNN-IBN’s Bhupendra Chaubey took up this question with a panel of experts in a special show Dr Fake.
The panel consisted of Medical Council of India (MCI) Chairperson Dr B J Bora; Editor Special Investigations V K Shashikumar; Managing Trustee, AMC Dr Lalit Kapoor; DCCP Central Delhi Alok Kumar; and Director Rockland Hospital, Dr P K Dave.
Dr B J Bora opened the debate, immediately launching into a defence of the MCI.
“When a case of a doctor having a fake degree is brought to the MCI’s notice, it lodges a case with the police. The MCI is only concerned with doctors whose degrees are registered and who have passed out from recognised universities,” said Dr JB Vora.
Dr Vora said that the doctors who were fake, were to be dealt by the Government and it was not actually the responsibility of the MCI to convict them or take action against them.
However, he said that this did not mean that any doctor who got a degree from anywhere in the world was welcome to come to India and practice. He stated that it was simply not in the power of the MCI to deal with fraudulent doctors.
V K Shashikumar completely disagreed with Dr Vora saying, "The MCI maintains the Indian Medical Register in which all doctors who are legally given the license to practice are registered. MCI is a statutory body and thus has the power to derecognise and deregister a doctor if a fake degree is unearthed."
"It is only then that the police take up the case and carry it forward from there,” he added.
But the immediate cause of worry was the fact that these number of fake doctors were going up in the country at an alarming rate.
Dr Lalit Kapoor said that though the figures looked frightening, the issue could be controlled provided the cause was known. He said that though the MCI could derecognise the doctor, it had no power to take any further action against that doctor, according to the Medical Council Act.
"I think that this particular lacuna should be corrected,” he said.
Alok Kumar jumped into the discussion at this point saying that the police was equipped enough to figure out whether a mark sheet was genuine or forged — all this of course, after registering a case against the doctor first.
So how are the doctors practicing under a forged certificate ultimately shown the door?
“It has been a perplexing situation. The MCI reports the case and the police register the case and closes it. There is actually a systematic flaw,” said Shashikumar.
So the MCI knows where the problem is but action is not taken. It prefers to file a complaint police and this is where corruption sets in. The police simply ask for some money and the case is closed.
Dr P K Dave bringing out an interesting point said that since the doctors who has passed out from foreign had to undergo a test to practice and it was the duty of the MCI to really find out if the doctors have passed the test or not.
“The Delhi Medical Association has been asking the Delhi government to bring about a legislation wherein the fake doctors can be arrested,” said Dr Dave.
So if there could be a solution for this menace, would the police need more powers to tackle the problem or should there be a completely different setup of the legislation?
“If the MCI declares somebody to have a fake degree then there is need for investigation. The police should swiftly act, register the case and prosecute the offender,” concluded Shashikumar.
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