The Ghana Medical and Dental Council (MDC) has caused the arrest of a 38-year-old man who allegedly faked being a doctor and earned a job as head of the Medical Department of the J-Prompt Institute of Technology (JPIT). Theophilus Tay, who also owns and operates the Teshie Teenage Foundation Clinic was reported to the MDC by one of the students he was training to become a medical assistant at the JPIT. Suspecting that he was fake due to his incompetence in teaching, the student sought to find out from the MDC whether Tay was registered with the council, and where he had trained. When the MDC looked through its records it found that Tay was fake, hence his arrest. The Ministry of Health has waded into the saga, saying it has not yet permitted JPIT to train medical assistants. Mr Kofi Afari, Information Manager at the Human Resource Department of the Ministry, however said officials of the school bad been to the ministry to start discussions on the curriculum and the placement of students in the country's public medical facilities after training. He said the ministry and the JPIT were yet to agree on the curriculum and had, therefore, not given the thumbs up for the training to begin. The Registrar of the MDC, Dr Eli Atikpui, told the Daily Graphic that the police were conducting further investigations to enable them to bring Tay before court in the course of the week. The Director of the JPIT, Mr Joseph Nii Obli Adjei, when contacted by the Daily Graphic, said Tay was introduced to him by a friend named George as a medical doctor. He admitted not conducting any search on his background to ascertain whether Tay was actually qualified or not, explaining that he had faith in the information he had received and, therefore, right away employed him to begin the three-year training course for medical assistants. Mr Adjei also confirmed the information from the Ministry of Health that discussions bad begun on the curriculum and that that did not amount to permission. The student who reported Tay to the MDC told the Daily Graphic that after two years of training, students were posted to the Tamale Teaching-Hospital for their clinicals but when they got there, Dr Ken Sagoe, Chief Executive of the hospital, refused to accept them because the school was not accredited. He said Dr Sagoe also doubted the credibility of Tay. According to the student, the rejected students made their own arrangements and got attached to the Bawku Presbyterian Hospital for four months. He said when he told Tay about the fact that the students had been rejected by Dr Sagoe and that he (Sagoe ) had also cast doubts on his credibility, Tay replied that Dr Sagoe was envious of him as the two had contested for an award in medical school many years ago and he (Tay) had won. He said Tay, in his dealings with staff and students, was not decorous and demonstrated gross incompetence with regard to the subjects he taught in class. In his statement to the MDC, sighted by the Daily Graphic, Tay claimed that he was indeed not a medical doctor and that he only assumed the title. Source: Daily Graphic