September 12, 2007	Wednesday	Sha'aban 29, 1428

PESHAWAR, Sept 11: The National Accountability Bureau (NAB) has begun looking into cases involving people who claim to have acquired medical degrees from Afghanistan, according to sources.

“There are about 300 doctors claiming to have had done Masters in Medicine (MD) from medical colleges in Afghanistan. But most of these people did not even visit Afghanistan and they obtained degrees through unfair means,” they said.

According to them, about 200 of the doctors who allegedly graduated from medical colleges in Jalalabad and Kabul are working for the provincial health department.

Sources revealed that some four months ago, the Frontier wing of the NAB had opened a monitoring and evaluation cell with a view to looking into the irregularities at the provincial health department.

They added that the cell had started looking into cases involving ‘doctors’ who had obtained degrees from Afghanistan. “Some of the doctors are even working for some UN agencies even though their degrees were never verified by the officials concerned,” said one source.

An official of the Health Regulatory Authority (HRA) confirmed that the NAB had begun verifying degrees reportedly obtained from medical colleges in Afghanistan.

In this connection, a meeting of the officials of the HRA and the NAB was held some two months ago in which modalities for the verification work were chalked out.