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A diploma from a Tunisian faculty or a recognised equivalent, nothing else: the October 2025 communiqué in which Tunisia's medical Order said non-validated training confers no qualification
In Tunisia the right to practise medicine, and the narrower right to practise a particular speciality, both run through the Conseil National de l'Ordre des Médecins, the CNOM, the doctors' Order in Tunis. Being allowed to carry out a specific medical activity is a separate question from being on the register, and since a Health Minister's order of 22 May 2023 on the recognition of physicians' habilitation, that second permission depends on the Order recognising the doctor's competence.
In October 2025 the CNOM published a communiqué restating the rule. According to Kapitalis, which dated it to 8 October, the Order said that only the habilitations and competences recognised by the CNOM give the right to carry out a specific medical activity. Any competence, the communiqué said, must be justified by a university diploma issued by a Tunisian faculty of medicine, or by an equivalent diploma recognised under the regulations in force.
Business News, reporting on 9 October, quoted the Order's wording on training taken outside accredited academic or university frameworks and not validated by the CNOM. Such courses 'ne confèrent aucune qualification', confer no qualification. They do not allow the holder to practise the competence concerned, and they 'ne peuvent en aucun cas être mentionnées dans la communication médicale', may in no case be mentioned in medical communication. Any practice beyond the recognised habilitation, the Order added, exposes its author to the sanctions of Law 91-21 of 13 March 1991. Neither outlet reported a triggering case or any disciplinary decision; this was a reminder of the rule, not an announcement of proceedings.
The gap the Order is closing is the one between a certificate that exists and a qualification the regulator recognises. A doctor can hold a genuine attestation from a short private course or an institution abroad and still have no right to use it in Tunisia or to advertise it. The check that fails is the assumption that a piece of paper speaks for itself; under the 2023 order, the CNOM's recognition is what counts.
For a student weighing a medical course in Tunisia, or a graduate approached by an agent selling a 'specialisation' certificate, the test is simple. Ask whether the diploma is issued by a Tunisian faculty of medicine or is a recognised equivalent, and ask the CNOM in writing whether it will register the competence. Anything the Order has not validated cannot be practised or advertised in Tunisia. Pay the institution rather than the agent, keep your original documents, and treat the regulator's register, not a brochure, as the final word. Egypt's 2024 blacklist of institutions selling unaccredited degrees, recorded elsewhere on this site, applies the same principle one border to the east.
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