Two to ten million kwanzas for an insemination, about 200 women, not one pregnancy: the Kilamba clinic owner whose registration number was never issued by ORMED

Angola's doctors are regulated by the Ordem dos Médicos de Angola, known as ORMED, which keeps the register of everyone entitled to practise medicine. Its registration number is the one credential a patient can check, and this case turned on a number the Order said it does not use and has never assigned.

According to Novo Jornal, a man identified only as Adão presented himself as a reproductive-health specialist at a clinic called Daisy Well in the Kilamba centrality of Luanda. The clinic offered gynaecology, obstetrics and urology consultations alongside artificial insemination, in-vitro fertilisation and hydrotubation, and its advertising drew in about 200 women struggling to conceive. Novo Jornal published the prices: 400,000 to 600,000 kwanzas for urine, blood and vaginal exudate tests, 2 to 10 million kwanzas for artificial insemination, about 30,000 for an individual consultation and 50,000 for a couple. One woman paid about 4 million kwanzas and a couple paid more than 6 million.

The paper reported that none of the women became pregnant. In one case the man retrieved a woman's eggs in what it called precarious conditions, and patients were left with gonorrhoea and syphilis; one woman contracted a bacterial infection that caused serious ovarian problems. After several complaints, the Serviço de Investigação Criminal in Luanda detained him that week, Novo Jornal reported on 9 March 2023, adding that he would face charges of qualified fraud, illegal exercise of a profession and serious offences against physical integrity. Rádio Nacional de Angola, reporting the same day, said the suspect had defrauded more than 200 women over more than four years, and that SIC Luanda spokesman Fernando Carvalho attributed the infections to the poor conditions at the clinic.

The check that would have stopped this was the simplest one. An ORMED member, Dr Aldimiro Kusivila, told Rádio Nacional, as cited by Novo Jornal, that the man is not a doctor, does not appear in the Order's database, and that the registration number he presented is not one the Order uses or assigns. A clinic with a sign and a price list looks like medicine, and infertility makes people reluctant to question anyone who offers hope. The scheme ran on cash, desperation and a number nobody verified.

For a student or family weighing medicine abroad, the lesson is the same. The register, not the certificate on the wall, is the proof. Before paying anyone who claims a professional status, whether a clinician, an agent or a college representative, look them up with the regulator, and pay the institution, never the intermediary. Cases from Tanzania, Uganda and Kenya elsewhere on this site show the same pattern: credentials that fell apart the moment someone asked the register.