A thesis-defence attestation dated February 2024, a 200,000 FCFA internship and six years of study without a seventh: the Dakar student tried for forging her way into Clinique Océan

Dakar's private medical universities take students from neighbouring countries as well as from Senegal itself, and the training is long. As the Senegalese press accounts of this case make clear, a student who has finished six years is still not a doctor: the seventh year and a defended thesis come first. The gap between someone who has sat through six years of lectures and someone who holds the doctorate is exactly where this case sits. It is the second Senegalese case on this site; the first, about a nursing diploma bought in Morocco and a document ring in Pikine, is recorded elsewhere here.

According to Actusen, Rawane Hassan, a 28-year-old Ivorian national, had completed six years of medical training at Euromed, a private university in the Ouakam district of Dakar, but had never defended a thesis nor begun the seventh year. She nevertheless presented the Clinique Océan with an attestation stating that she had defended her thesis in February 2024, and on the strength of it obtained an internship paying 200,000 FCFA a month. Actusen reported that she told the court the document had been sent to her by her mother in Côte d'Ivoire, who kept her papers.

The clinic's deputy director checked the document. According to Actusen, an inquiry with Euromed found that the attestation was falsified, and it was the university's own management that took the matter to court. Hassan was arrested on 6 January 2025 and appeared before the Tribunal des flagrants délits de Dakar on 15 January 2025, charged with illegal practice of medicine, endangering the lives of others, fraud, and forgery and use of a forged administrative document. Dakaractu, citing L'Observateur, which first revealed the case, reported that the prosecutor said she had drawn a salary of 200,000 FCFA while performing medical acts she was not qualified to carry out, and asked for two years' firm imprisonment. Her defence lawyers argued that she had worked under a qualified doctor's supervision, and Hassan told the court she had never been on duty alone: "Je n'ai jamais assuré la garde." The deputy director testified, according to Actusen, that she had never performed any compromising medical act. The verdict was set for 22 January 2025, and we have not seen the outcome.

What stands out is that the check worked. An attestation of thesis defence is a single sheet of paper issued by one institution, and nobody outside that institution can confirm it from the document alone. The clinic did the only thing that settles the question: it asked the school. Nothing in this case is an allegation against Euromed or against the Clinique Océan. The university was the party that reported the forgery, and the clinic was the party that detected it.

For a student or a family, the lesson cuts two ways. A six-year student is not a doctor, and no clinic, agent or relative can make her one; the shortfall is a year of study and a thesis, and any paper that claims otherwise turns an academic delay into a criminal charge, in this case in a foreign country. Keep your own originals and know exactly what each one certifies. For anyone hiring, do what the Clinique Océan did: take the diploma or attestation to the issuing institution directly, and check the regulator's register before letting anyone near a patient.