Two stamps, one in a general practitioner's name, hospital prescriptions and 870,000 dinars in cash: the Algiers woman arrested for home-visit medicine without a diploma

In Algeria, as in most countries, a person may treat patients and write prescriptions only with a recognised medical diploma and official authorisation. A doctor's prescription carries a personal stamp, and pharmacies and hospitals treat that stamp as proof that a qualified person stands behind the paper. A case announced in Algiers in March 2025 shows how a paid practice can run on nothing more than a stamp, a stock of medicines and a willingness to visit people at home.

According to La Patrie News, the Algiers National Gendarmerie issued a communiqué on Saturday 15 March 2025 announcing that its research and investigation unit at Bir Mourad Raïs had arrested a 38-year-old woman for practising medicine without a diploma or authorisation. The outlet reported that the investigation began with a complaint for fraud lodged against her with the same unit. Horizons, citing the same communiqué, said she visited patients at their homes, gave them care and issued prescriptions bearing a falsified doctor's stamp, all in exchange for money.

The search of her home, as described by Horizons, turned up medicines, food supplements, medical devices, medical documents and prescriptions from various hospitals, along with two rectangular stamps, one in her own name and one in the name of a general practitioner. La Patrie News reported that cash estimated at 87 million centimes, about 870,000 dinars, was also seized. Horizons said she would be brought before the competent courts once the legal procedures were complete.

The gendarmerie's account points to why such a practice can last. Home visits mean no clinic sign, no waiting room and nothing for a health inspector to walk past. A stamp carrying a real general practitioner's name makes a prescription look legitimate to a pharmacist who has no quick way of checking that the person who signed it is the person named on it. Patients paying in cash at home are unlikely to ask for a diploma, and would have had no easy way to verify one. According to the communiqué as reported, it was a fraud complaint, not an inspection, that ended the arrangement.

For a student or family considering medicine abroad, the lesson is the same one that runs through the Moroccan and Egyptian cases recorded elsewhere on this site. A stamp, a letterhead or a confident manner proves nothing; only the official register does. Before paying a doctor, an agent or a college, ask which authority licenses them and check with that authority directly, not through a document they hand you. Pay the institution, never an intermediary, keep every receipt, and if something is wrong, report it, because a single complaint is what brought this practice to an end.