A 23-year-old South African girl has been arrested for conning five different South African hospitals into thinking she was a medical intern.
The con artist identified as Nokwanda Ndlovu posed as a medical intern in five different hospitals, treating patients and administering drugs.
Nokwanda Ndlovu who is actually a high school dropout ran the scam for over two years (2017 – 2019) before she was caught.
It was reported that Nokwanda Ndlovu started her scam when she was just 20 years old. The first hospital she worked at was probably Benedictine Hospital, Nongoma, in 2017.
Between November 2017 and February 2018, she moved to Nongoma Hospital and later that year, she joined Hlabisa Hospital.
She was working at another hospital in Nkandla, after been at two more other hospitals, before she was finally arrested.
Nokwanda Ndlovu will appear in court again on July 27, South African law authorities say.
Some of Nokwanda Ndlovu’s past colleagues have attested that she had no medical knowledge.
A nurse from one of the hospitals Ndlovu has worked at said:
“All of us knew that something was just not right about her. She did not know how to stitch patients, she did not know the most basic medical processes like reading blood pressure, the difference between diastolic or systolic, what each of those mean – she had no idea.”
Another nurse said Nokwanda Ndlovu told them she was an orphan and had no place to stay so they let her stay at the doctors’ quarters.
Reports of “bogus doctors” in South Africa have risen over the years with dozens of them arrested each year.
