Clare Dyer

A doctor who charged patients thousands of pounds for fake cancer treatments has been struck off the UK medical register.1Mohsen Ali billed a man with prostate cancer (Patient A) as much as £15 000 for ozone therapy, vitamin C, and garlic oil delivered by cannula. He also charged a woman (Patient B), who had stage 4 ovarian cancer, £10 000-£12 000 for the sham treatments.Patient B was informed that the substances she was given through a PICC line (peripherally inserted central catheter) were vitamin C, oxygenated water, ozone treatment, and sodium bicarbonate. But the General Medical Council’s (GMC) lawyer Jade Bucklow told the tribunal that “it was impossible to know what had been administered” to …

An anaesthetist who was struck off the UK medical register for dishonesty in 2012 then restored in 2020 has been struck off again, for misconduct involving dishonesty and for deficient professional performance.12Mona Hosny, a consultant anaesthetist at the time, worked as a locum for three NHS trusts in 2022 while under investigation by Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust over concerns about her practice.This was despite her agreeing not to undertake any patient facing duties while under investigation and, as such, her actions were dishonest, a medical practitioners tribunal found.That investigation led to Hosny’s referral for a General Medical Council assessment of the standard of her professional performance.In that assessment, conducted in February 2023, her performance was rated “unacceptable” in two categories—maintaining professional performance and clinical management—and a “cause for concern” in two others—assessment of …

The largest product liability case in UK legal history—with more than 7000 potential claimants—reached the High Court in London this week for a preliminary hearing to decide how the case should go ahead.The court was asked to make a group litigation order allowing the claimants to proceed together in a mass action against Johnson & Johnson (J&J)—along with its current and former subsidiaries Johnson & Johnson Management and Kenvue UK—which are accused of knowingly selling baby powder contaminated with asbestos.The claimants’ case is that the powder was carcinogenic and caused mesothelioma and ovarian …

A coroner has questioned whether enough information is provided about the risk of suicide associated with selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) after the son in law of Prince and Princess Michael of Kent shot himself after taking the antidepressant drugs.Thomas Kingston, 45, died of a self-inflicted shotgun wound to the head last February while visiting his parents in Kemble, Gloucestershire.Katy Skerrett, senior coroner for Gloucestershire, has sent a regulation 28 report, intended to prevent future deaths, to the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE), the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory …

A consultant obstetrician who put pressure on an unwilling patient into having a forceps delivery, and who failed to obtain informed consent, has won a High Court appeal against a decision to suspend her from the UK medical register for three weeks.1Last year a medical practitioners tribunal found Premila Thampi’s fitness to practise to be impaired but accepted in mitigation that it was an isolated incident that had occurred in 2016 and no further concerns had been raised about her practice since then, she had remediated and expressed remorse, and was a “good and competent clinician.”2The tribunal decided in June 2025 to suspend her for three weeks after deciding that taking no action following a finding of impairment would require exceptional …

A consultant who was suspended from the UK medical register after a tribunal decided that he was guilty of a “one-off” rape has been struck off by a new tribunal.1The decision came after the regulator, the General Medical Council (GMC), appealed the original ruling to the High Court.Aloaye Foy-Yamah, 57, was an acute care consultant at Blackpool Victoria Hospital when he raped a young female friend while she was staying at his home in 2018. He expressed contrition and concerns about a possible prison sentence in recorded phone calls with her family.Foy-Yamah admitted sexual assault in these calls but not rape. Lancashire police investigated the case, but no charges followed.Foy-Yamah continued working after this, rising to interim department head during the covid pandemic, until 2024, when his case was …

A consultant neurosurgeon who had sex with a patient and gave her painkillers when she threatened to reveal the relationship has been suspended for eight months, after a tribunal heard that striking him off would be “nothing short of a disaster for the people of Wales.”1Chirag Patel, the only surgeon in Wales qualified to perform all parts of neuromodulation surgery, carried out spinal disc operations twice in 2019 on a woman named only as Patient A.After the second operation she asked for his phone number in case symptoms recurred, which he provided.A month later, in September 2019, she called him, and the two began a personal relationship that soon turned sexual. At one point he sent her nude images of himself.Patel told the medical practitioners tribunal that he considered her to be no longer his patient at this point. But in January 2020, while the relationship was still sexual, she complained of …

A decision to impose a 12 month suspension on a doctor who had a sexual relationship with a teenage patient he had met in hospital years before, rather than striking him off the UK medical register, has been upheld in the High Court.1The case of Cian Hughes is among those cited to support the accusation that medical practitioners tribunals treat cases of sexual misconduct by doctors too leniently.2Hughes was aged 23 and was a fourth year medical student at Bristol University in March 2011 when he observed a procedure on a 13 year old girl, Patient A, who has cerebral palsy spastic diplegia and uses a wheelchair. The two became friends during her six week hospital stay and continued communicating through email and iMessages until they met in person again in October 2014, when the girl was 17.This was the first time they had seen each other since February 2012, when she had had a procedure in the hospital.Hughes messaged her asking whether she would be interested …

A former NHS consultant vascular surgeon who inflicted injuries on himself thus causing his legs to be amputated and who then made fraudulent insurance claims has been struck off the UK medical register.Neil Hopper, 50, who had a sexual interest in amputation, submerged his feet in dry ice for eight hours, causing them to become “unviable,” and then underwent below-the-knee amputations in 2019.Last September he was jailed for two years and eight months after pleading guilty to two counts of fraud …

A doctor has been suspended from the UK medical register for 12 months for falsely claiming she had attended a training day when she was on leave to get married.1Preethi Suresh, who was a cardiology trainee at Norfolk and Norwich University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust at the time, told a medical practitioners tribunal she had “hit the panic button,” thinking she was falling short of the number of training days she needed.She scanned a QR code to confirm her registration at the cardiology training day, scanned a second code, and completed feedback, then uploaded the certificate to her e-portfolio.The deception was …