Sapa
The Health Professions Council of SA (HPCSA) has blamed itself for allowing a bogus neurosurgeon to practise at South African hospitals.
Qualified general practitioner Nyunyi Wambuyi Katumba did not meet the requirements for registration as a neurosurgeon, but was registered with the council, HPCSA president Sam Mokgokong told reporters in Pretoria yesterday.
Katumba worked at Chris Hani Baragwanath Academic Hospital and Steve Biko Academic Hospital in Pretoria. He was fired from both because of incompetence.
“The error lies within us, and so the corrective issues are within us as an organisation.”
Mokgokong said Katumba had now been deregistered.
“He initially applied in 2003 to be certified as a neurosurgeon in this country. He sat for the South African college examinations with other doctors, and he failed.”
Katumba, originally from the Democratic Republic of Congo, worked in SA as a specialist from June 2007.
Mokgokong said false information was submitted to the council in 2007, stating that Katumba had passed the necessary exams. He was subsequently registered in public service neurosurgery.
After serving for three years in the public service, and after obtaining South African permanent residence status, Katumba was registered as a specialist independent practitioner on July 9 last year.
He previously worked in Botswana and Zimbabwe, and was fired in both countries.
After being dismissed from Steve Biko Academic Hospital on the grounds of incompetency, Katumba took the matter to the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration, which he won after a 12-month legal wrangle.
Mokgokong was in charge of the neurosurgery department at the Pretoria hospital and had dismissed Katumba. He said he was surprised that Bara went ahead and hired him without making any enquiries.
“There needs to be communication between us when somebody moves from one place to another. I do not know what reference he gave the head of department at the Baragwanath. I have now told them that they should have contacted me.”
When Katumba left the Pretoria hospital, Mokgokong said he received a call from the head of neurosurgery at the University of Cape Town, seeking Katumba’s reference.
“They said he had applied for a job and wanted to know how he was, and I told them I had just dismissed him. That’s how it ended,” said Mokgokong.
Investigations were under way to determine who had supplied the false information on behalf of Katumba for the registration process. No criminal charges had been laid against Katumba, said HPCSA acting registrar Kgosi Letlape.
“If any person lays a complaint about the service he received from Dr Katumba during the time he had registered, we will make him (Katumba) account,” said Letlape.
Two former staff members had been implicated so far. They had willingly left the council’s employ.
“We are already taking the files of all the foreign qualified doctors to scrutinise them,” Mokgokong said.
SA employs about 400 foreign qualified general practitioners and 500 specialist doctors annually.