📰 From the news · Impersonating a real college/agent
Three European women, one Dubai flat, unlicensed medicine and no licence: the August 2025 raid and the DHA register every patient can check
In Dubai, a medical or cosmetic practitioner is licensed by the Dubai Health Authority (DHA), and the licence can be looked up by anyone on the DHA website or the DHA Sheryan app. Authorities quoted by Khaleej Times say UAE law requires all medical and cosmetic work to be carried out in licensed facilities by qualified practitioners. A raid announced on 13 August 2025 showed what happens when neither condition is met.
According to The National, Dubai Police announced that day that three women, each from a different European country, had been arrested for performing medical and cosmetic procedures without a licence from a residential apartment in Dubai. Police said they received a tip-off about suspicious activity and raided the property together with the Dubai Health Authority, seizing medical equipment, tools and unlicensed medicine. Khaleej Times reported on 14 August 2025 that the raid was carried out by the Anti-Economic Crime Department of Dubai Police with the DHA, and that the women were giving treatments without the required approvals. All three were transferred to the Dubai Public Prosecution to face legal action. Their nationalities, ages and the procedures performed were not disclosed, and police did not name them.
Police, according to The National, urged the public to use only authorised, licensed practitioners, to verify the qualifications of cosmetic service providers and not to be fooled by fake advertisements. Khaleej Times quoted licensed doctors on what unlicensed cosmetic work does to patients: infections, abscesses from contaminated fillers, burns from uncalibrated lasers, scarring from improper chemical peels, and nerve damage that, once it sets in, often cannot be reversed. One doctor added that unlicensed providers often use counterfeit, expired or badly stored products. The same report set out how to check a practitioner in Dubai: look up the licence on the DHA website or the Sheryan app, and report illegal medical activity through the Police Eye service or by calling 901.
The mechanism was an apartment doing the work of a clinic. A flat has no clinic licence on display and is not a licensed facility, yet the women, according to police, were offering medical and cosmetic services there as though it were one. The check that failed on the patients' side was the simplest available in the Emirates: a name typed into the DHA register.
For students and families in the Gulf the lesson is practical. Treatment offered in a home, salon or hotel room, prices far below the market, no receipts and no consent forms, and a refusal to show product labels are the warning signs Khaleej Times listed. Before any injection or procedure, search the practitioner on the DHA register, and ask to see the product's sterile packaging opened in front of you.
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