The Saudi Commission for Health Specialties (SCHS) has recently renewed its contract with an international company specialized in detecting forged certificates. This comes among concerted efforts by the SCHS to reduce and prevent the large number of fake certificates used by health care practitioners seeking to work in the Kingdom.
The accreditation and registration department at the SCHS is taking all the necessary precautionary measures to ensure the authenticity and validity of the certificates of health practitioners in the Kingdom.
In line with these efforts, the SCHS recently issued a decision obliging all health practitioners in the Kingdom to provide original documented proof of their qualifications from the countries that issued their certificates. The decision was made effective two months ago.
Moreover, the SCHS’s contract with the company specialized in identifying counterfeit certificates, stipulates that the latter will check the authenticity of the health care practitioners’ qualifications directly from the country that issued the certificate. This will be facilitated through the company’s electronic correspondence system with the accreditation and registration department of the commission.
According to reports obtained by a local newspaper, the SCHS detected a large number of fraudulent certificates last year. In addition between 1422H and 1431H, 489 fake medical certificates were discovered in the public sector, while 1,047 counterfeit certificates were detected in the private sector.
The total is an astounding figure of 1,536 from various health care disciplines including pharmaceutical companies, nursing, optical sciences, dentistry, radiology, anesthesia, physical therapy and a number of other medical specializations.
1,536 health worker certificates fake
