A "sixth-year medical student" and an environmental health officer ran a doctors' practice at Zambia's biggest hospital for six years

Zambian police announced the arrest of two men who had, they said, operated as doctors at the University Teaching Hospital in Lusaka — the country's largest — from 2017 until a tip-off from a real doctor exposed them, according to TRT Afrika. The men were identified as a Zimbabwean national who claimed to be a sixth-year medical student and a Zambian environmental health officer. Their operation, a hospital source told the outlet, ran alongside a pharmacy they owned nearby: they prescribed expensive drugs that could only be bought there, and issued pre-authorisations through the National Health Insurance Management Authority, whose staff eventually grew suspicious. They were charged with impersonation, forgery and uttering false documents, and are entitled to the presumption of innocence.

The medical-student angle is what connects this case to the students who read this site. A student far enough along in a real programme has enough knowledge to pass as a doctor for years — and, in a stretched health system, enough opportunity. Related reporting from Zimbabwe and Zambia shows the same population on the other side of the counter: a syndicate of bogus "recruitment agents" charging foreign applicants fees to a Zambian medical training institute they did not represent, and a third-year medical student at the University of Zambia accused of issuing fake receipts to newly arrived Zimbabwean students for permits and fees, with several losing significant sums.

Zambia hosts a growing number of medical students from Zimbabwe, Malawi, the DRC and beyond, and its regulator, the Health Professions Council of Zambia, publishes both the register of practitioners and the list of accredited training institutions. Those two lists are the defence on both ends: a patient or an employer can confirm that a "doctor" is on the register, and a student can confirm that a school and its "agent" are real before paying anyone.

The wider lesson is one regulators everywhere are learning: impersonation is cheapest where verification is slowest. A hospital that had checked its own staff against the register would have found two names missing in 2017 rather than 2023 — and a student who checks an institution against its regulator's list finds out in an afternoon what the students in the receipts scam learned after paying.