A forged university certificate, medical ID cards and three phones: the 'psychiatrist' running an unlicensed cosmetic clinic in Ain Shams, Cairo, September 2026

In Egypt a doctor must hold a Faculty of Medicine degree, be registered with the Egyptian Medical Syndicate and be licensed by the Ministry of Health and Population, and the clinic itself needs a separate licence under the private health facilities law. The ministry's directorates run inspection committees, and in September 2026 one of them walked into a cosmetic clinic in Ain Shams, in eastern Cairo.

According to Okaz, the Saudi newspaper which carried the ministry's statement on 27 September 2026, an inspection by the Free Treatment committee of the Cairo Health Affairs Directorate, in coordination with the Interior Ministry's public funds investigators, found a man inside the clinic receiving patients and conducting psychological assessments while presenting himself as a psychiatrist. He held no licence to practise and had used forged academic certificates to suggest a medical qualification. The facility was unlicensed and had no safe arrangements for disposing of medical waste. It was closed, a violation report was filed and the case was referred to the competent authorities.

Egypt Telegraph gave the Interior Ministry's account on 19 October 2026, in a report mainly about a separate case: a man from the Abdeen police district accused of posing as a psychiatrist, running an unlicensed clinic and laundering about EGP 10 million through flats and cars. The same report recounted the earlier Ain Shams arrest. That suspect, described as unemployed, without academic qualifications and with a criminal record, lived in the Moqattam police district and had set up and equipped a clinic in the First Ain Shams district without the required licences. Officers seized a university degree certificate and several ID cards attributed to medical bodies, all of which proved to be forged, together with three mobile phones whose examination showed evidence of the activity. He reportedly confessed and said he had done it for financial gain. Neither outlet names either man, and neither reports a court date.

The mechanism here was the clinic's own paperwork. A forged degree and forged professional cards were apparently enough to convince patients and whoever rented or staffed the premises; nobody seems to have asked the syndicate or the Health Affairs Directorate whether the man and the facility were on their registers. The ministry's statement, as carried by Okaz, urged citizens to verify the licences of healthcare providers before receiving any treatment and to report unlicensed facilities through official channels, and promised continued inspection campaigns across the governorates.

For patients the lesson is that a framed certificate on a wall is not a credential; the credential is the entry on the syndicate's register and the facility licence, both of which can be asked for. For students who may one day work in Egypt, or who hold Egyptian degrees, the case shows why employers and regulators abroad increasingly insist on verification direct from the university and the syndicate rather than from the applicant's own copies.