€330,000 from one cancer patient and a prison term confirmed on appeal: Portugal's false "doctor" of Porto, and the cases that followed in the Algarve and the north

Portugal's medical register is run by the Ordem dos Médicos, and its courts have been willing to send people to prison for practising outside it.

According to Observador, in March 2022 the Porto Court of Appeal confirmed an effective prison sentence for a 36-year-old man convicted in October 2021 of aggravated fraud. He had built a reputation as a homeopath and osteopath and defrauded a cancer patient of about €330,000, presenting himself in a medical role he was not qualified for. The appeal court rejected the request to suspend the sentence.

The register has caught real doctors too. Público reported in January 2024 that a 65-year-old doctor in the Algarve was detained on suspicion of corruption and issuing false certificates, accused of signing death certificates in Loulé since 2020 stating a known cause of death in exchange for money; he was barred from practising and ordered to report to police. Correio da Manhã reported four people, two of them employees of a private hospital in the north, detained over falsified prescriptions for diabetes medication in a scheme running since at least 2024.

Portugal attracts international medical students, and the cases are a reminder of two things about any destination. The first is that the title "Dr" is not a qualification; the Ordem's register is, and it is public. The second is that a country with functioning enforcement is safer for a student precisely because its regulator acts, which is also why its recognition of a foreign qualification is worth something. When comparing destinations, a medical council that publishes its register, prosecutes impostors and answers verification requests is the signal to look for, not the number of English-language brochures.