Doctor’s work history unclear
Yesterday a spokesperson for the Health Service Executive said it had consulted with personnel in payroll and with Comhairle na nOspidéal, the body which covers consultant appointments, to see if Dr Prem Chandra Kumar Chhetri, an obsetrician/gynaecologist, had worked in an Irish hospital.
“It does not appear that he worked here prior to being struck off,” the HSE spokesman said. However he could not say categorically that Dr Chhetri had never worked in Ireland. Dr Chhetri was registered to work here until December last when he was struck off the medical register. This followed a finding of professional misconduct against him by the Medical Council, a decision upheld by the High Court.
In May last year, Dr Chhetri was struck off the British medical register following an inquiry by the General Medical Council. It emerged that he had carried out a number of botched procedures in the course of 11 days in April 2003 while working at Mid-Staffordshire General Hospital’s NHS Trust. These included inserting packing in a woman’s rectum instead of her vagina to stop bleeding.
He left Britain to work abroad in 2004 after an inquiry into his work began, but he did not inform medical authorities where he was going.
A statement from the Medical Council yesterday said once fully registered, a doctor is entitled to work anywhere in the Republic of Ireland and does not have to inform the Medical Council. When asked whether Dr Chhetri had ever worked in Ireland, a spokesperson for the Medical Council said she could not comment. She said this did not equate to refusing to state whether Dr Chhetri practised here.
A statement from the council said: “It is not that the Medical Council ‘refuses to state’ whether the doctor practised here. The Medical Council is obliged by law to publish the registers it maintains and a doctor’s registered address is part of the register.” However, no details of Dr Chhetri exist on the register because his name had been erased.
The health department was unable to shed light on whether he practised here.
