Two printing plates, admission forms, textbooks and forged certificates in several medical specialities: the unlicensed 'educational entity' in Nasr City run by a self-styled physiotherapy doctor

Egypt's universities and institutes train large numbers of doctors and allied-health professionals and draw students from across Africa and the Middle East for medicine, dentistry, pharmacy and physiotherapy. A qualification only counts if the issuing institution is recognised by the Ministry of Higher Education, and a practitioner may only work once registered with the relevant professional syndicate. The gap between a certificate that looks official and one that is actually on a register is where the trade described below operates. It is the same gap behind the ministry's 2024 blacklist of institutions selling unaccredited degrees, recorded elsewhere on this site.

According to Egypt Telegraph, reporting on 16 June 2025, the Interior Ministry arrested a man resident in Giza Governorate who had been presenting himself as a physiotherapy doctor. Police said he had set up an unlicensed educational entity in the area covered by the Nasr City Second police station in Cairo, and that the entity forged academic certificates in several medical fields. He promoted it on social media, the report said, to take money from people who believed they were buying a genuine qualification.

Both Egypt Telegraph and Youm7, in a 22 June 2025 feature on fake doctors online, reported that the arrest was made by the ministry's Sector for Combating Public Funds Crimes and Organised Crime. According to Egypt Telegraph, officers seized a number of academic certificates, admission application forms, textbooks, two printing plates, medical tools and a mobile phone said to contain evidence of the activity. The man reportedly admitted the acts when confronted, a report was filed and the case was referred to the Public Prosecution. The same Egypt Telegraph report also recorded an earlier arrest in Dokki, Giza, of a man running a separate unlicensed educational entity that promised accredited certificates leading to jobs at major companies; blank certificates, registration forms and promotional material were seized there.

The seizure list explains how the scheme worked. Admission forms and textbooks gave the entity the outward shape of a college, the printing plates allowed certificates to be produced to order, and social media supplied the customers. The check that failed is a simple one: whether the entity appeared on any official list of recognised institutions. Youm7's legal commentator noted that forging academic certificates is a felony under Egypt's Penal Code and that impersonating a medical professional attracts doubled penalties, so a certificate bought in this way is worthless at best and criminal evidence at worst.

For a student or family considering physiotherapy, nursing or medicine in Egypt, the lesson is to confirm the institution with the Ministry of Higher Education and the Supreme Council of Universities before paying anything, and to confirm the programme itself, not just the university name. A genuine course is run by a recognised faculty or institute with a published admission process, not by an office advertising diplomas on social media. Pay fees into the institution's own account, keep every receipt and original document, and treat an offer of a certificate without years of supervised study as what it is. For anyone being treated in Egypt, the syndicate's register, not a framed certificate on the wall, is the only proof that a practitioner is qualified.