📰 From the news · Other
2,714 health workers with forged degrees, including 60 general practitioners: Saudi Arabia's audit of its workforce, and the Pakistani doctors whose degrees it stopped accepting
Saudi Arabia employs tens of thousands of foreign-trained health workers, and its regulators have, over the past decade, become among the most demanding verifiers in the world. The reason is in the numbers they found.
According to an analysis by The New Arab, Saudi audits identified 2,714 workers in the public and private health sectors with forged degrees, including 1,431 nurses, 450 anaesthetists and laboratory technicians, 370 pharmacists and 60 general practitioners. The audit followed years of cases, among them the Jeddah "fertility doctor" reported by Gulf News and the bogus urologist, recorded elsewhere on this site, who practised for a decade.
The response reached beyond individuals. Middle East Eye reported that hundreds of Pakistani doctors faced sudden deportation after Saudi authorities decided to reject their medical degrees, a decision tied to the Saudi Commission for Health Specialties' classification of qualifications rather than to any finding against the individual doctors. Doctors with years of service were told their qualification no longer met the standard for their grade.
Two lessons for students. The first is that a forged degree in a health profession is found, eventually, because the employing country has every incentive to audit; the Saudi numbers show what an audit turns up when it is finally done. The second, and the more important for honest students, is that recognition is not permanent. A degree that was accepted when you were hired can be reclassified later, and the Gulf regulators publish the lists of institutions and qualifications they accept, with grades attached.
Before choosing a medical school with the Gulf in mind, look up that school on the Saudi, Emirati and Qatari classification lists, not the school's own claim of "recognised in the Middle East". If it is absent, or classified at a low grade, the degree will carry that grade with it.
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This is a news-sourced case summary written by the TrustMBBS team, not a first-person account; see the sources above. They reflect one person's experience and are not a verdict on any institution. Report your own: Report a scam or tell your story.