In Case You Haven't Heard

Up to 3,000 foreign doctors in the United Kingdom are having their backgrounds checked after it emerged that a fake psychiatrist with no qualifications was allowed to practice for over 22 years, CNN reported Nov. 19. Zholia Alemi was jailed for fraud in October after she changed an elderly client's will to make herself a beneficiary. Following that, it was discovered that when she first registered in Britain in 1995, Alemi had conned medical bodies into believing she had a qualification from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. The General Medical Council (GMC) has now launched an investigation into thousands of U.K.‐based doctors who registered for U.K. licenses in the same way as Alemi, Britain's Press Association reported. In 1995, Alemi took advantage of a section of the Medical Act, subsequently removed in 2003, that allowed medical graduates from some commonwealth countries to skip exams and rigorous document checks. A spokeswoman for the Department of Health and Social Care said in a statement: “As the organization responsible for regulating doctors, we expect the GMC to investigate how this criminal was able to register as a doctor and put measures in place to make sure it can't happen again.”