Two doctors held over illegal prescriptions

Abu Dhabi authorities arrested two Arab doctors in different medical establishments for making illegal prescriptions to patients in return for money and gifts, press reports said on Thursday.

The two psychiatrists, aged 68 and 71 years, were arrested in two separate incidents along with three pharmacists found to be involved in such illegal practices.

One doctor gave prescriptions to patients in return for expensive gifts while the other was paid Dh1,000 for each prescription.

“They gave prescriptions requested by the patients themselves in return for gifts and money,” Emirat Alyoum daily said, quoting Major General Mohammed Al Minhali, director of the police operations at the Abu Dhabi police department.

He said the prescriptions did not conform to the patients’ medical needs and were found to be “facilitating the abuse of psychotropic substances.

Minhali said all prescriptions had the stamp of the doctors’ medical establishments on them, adding that the pharmacists dispensed those prescriptions according to a phone call from those doctors.

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