Lerato Mbhiza
THE Gauteng Department of Health (GDH) opened a case of impersonating a medical doctor at the Brixton Police station on Monday, following reports of a so-called ‘Dr Matthew Lani’ who has assumed various pseudo medical roles, as well as falsely presenting himself as an employee of the department.
On Monday the GDH together with the Health Professions Council of South Africa (HPCSA) as well as the University of Witwatersrand (Wits) distanced themselves in a statement from the bogus Doctor also known as Dr Zingelwa Lani.
The self-proclaimed Tik Tok doctor who claimed to have studied medicine at Wits Medical School, has been dispensing medical advice and assumed the role of an HIV actiist online has been misrepresenting himself, according to the HPCSA and Wits.
In his Tik Tok video post, the ‘conman’ said he was enrolld at Wits from 2014 to 2021 and graduated from Wits Medical School at the age of 21.
But the university said they cannot find his name on their system.
In a statement the HPCSA denied Matthews Zingelwa-Lani’s claims to have been authorised by the HPCSA to make and distribute his video.
“The HPCSA would like to put it on record that no authorisation has been granted to Mr Zingelwa-Lani to make statements on behalf of the Council stating that he is a registered practitioner,” they say.
in addition, the department’s head of communication Motalatale Modiba said that further investigations have revealed that the name which Lani claims to be his real identity, belongs to a second-year medical intern at Tembisa Provincial Tertiary hospital; who has since opened a case of identity fraud at the Tembisa police station.
“Lani managed to weave his way into the system pretending to be an employee of Helen Joseph Hospital where he moved around the hospital corridors curating content for social media,” Modiba said.
While admitting that the department worked with Lani last year for its Youth Month campaign on young medical professionals and what it meant for them to be born-free; Modiba defended the department saying that nothing suspicious was raised at the time to contradict his employment at the facility.
Modiba confirmed that Lani recorded a video in October last year, complaining of non-payment as a medical intern, subsequently deleting the video following the CEO’s request for a meeting in the HR offices of the hospital.
In addition, Modiba said that Lani, under the name ‘Dr Sanele Zingelwa’, fabricated a story about a large number of people having been admitted at Helen Joseph after taking a particular weight-loss pill; a claim which has since been proven false by the SA Health Products Regulatory Authority in August this year.
Modiba said that the criminal case against Lani is in line with the Health Profession Act 56 of 1974 as amended which states that practicing while not registered with the HPCSA is a criminal offence and that any person who uses any name, title, description or symbol indicating, or calculated to lead persons to infer that he or she is the holder of any qualification of which they are not shall be guilty of an offence and on conviction, is liable to a fine, imprisonment or both.
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