Fitness to practise - Bad doctors deserve no protection

Legal notices were inserted in newspapers on January 3 to indicate that the High Court had confirmed the decision of the Irish Medical Council (IMC), following a fitness to practise inquiry, to erase the name of Dr Prem Chandra Kumar Chhetri from the Irish medical register. Although Dr Chhetri was registered to work in Ireland, the IMC refuses to state whether he ever actually practised medicine in this country.

Dr Chhetri, who suffers from cataracts, performed a series of botched procedures in Britain.

After a litany of errors at the Mid Staffordshire General Hospital during one 11-day period in 2003, he informed the British General Medical Council that he intended to work abroad while he was being investigated in Britain, but he did not state where he was going.