Fake doctor volunteered at Windhoek clinic

A YOUNG woman with an apparent desire to care for Namibians managed to inject herself into a Windhoek State clinic, where she worked for two months as a trainee doctor, despite having no qualifications.

The 20-year-old aspiring medical practitioner appeared in the Windhoek Magistrate’s Court yesterday after she spent two months working as a fake trainee doctor. Josephine Kalombo was not asked to plead and the case was postponed to September 23.She was granted bail of N$800.Kalombo worked as a volunteer and without pay.She faces a charge of fraud and contravening the Nursing Professions Act after she worked as a trainee medical doctor at the Robert Mugabe Clinic since May.She does not have any medical qualifications and was not appointed by the Ministry of Health.Nampa reported on Tuesday that Kalombo did all kinds of work at the clinic, including dispensing medicine, weighing and vaccinating babies and dressing wounds.When The Namibian’s team visited the clinic in June to cover the polio immunisation campaign, Kalombo was one of the medical practitioners administering the polio vaccine.A photographer recalled her as a lively person and said she willingly posed for photographs while immunising children and even introduced herself as a trainee doctor.Officials at the Ministry of Health were baffled by the incident and an investigation has started to find out how she ended up working at the clinic without a placement letter.Kalombo practised “voluntarily” at the clinic until a relative identified her and told the health authorities that she had never studied medicine.It is believed Kalombo told nurses that she would soon be off to the United States to continue her medical studies through a bursary from a local parastatal.Medical students do not normally do internships at clinics, but at hospitals and under supervision.It remains a mystery how she ended up at the clinic.Josephine Kalombo was not asked to plead and the case was postponed to September 23.She was granted bail of N$800.Kalombo worked as a volunteer and without pay.She faces a charge of fraud and contravening the Nursing Professions Act after she worked as a trainee medical doctor at the Robert Mugabe Clinic since May.She does not have any medical qualifications and was not appointed by the Ministry of Health.Nampa reported on Tuesday that Kalombo did all kinds of work at the clinic, including dispensing medicine, weighing and vaccinating babies and dressing wounds.When The Namibian’s team visited the clinic in June to cover the polio immunisation campaign, Kalombo was one of the medical practitioners administering the polio vaccine.A photographer recalled her as a lively person and said she willingly posed for photographs while immunising children and even introduced herself as a trainee doctor. Officials at the Ministry of Health were baffled by the incident and an investigation has started to find out how she ended up working at the clinic without a placement letter.Kalombo practised “voluntarily” at the clinic until a relative identified her and told the health authorities that she had never studied medicine.It is believed Kalombo told nurses that she would soon be off to the United States to continue her medical studies through a bursary from a local parastatal.Medical students do not normally do internships at clinics, but at hospitals and under supervision.It remains a mystery how she ended up at the clinic.