Janitor pretends to be doctor in Punjab hospital

A video of a janitor at a hospital in Punjab’s Wazirabad district, posing as a doctor and attending to patients, went viral on social media. Many doubted the video’s authenticity, but Geo Fact Check claims it to be true, as confirmed by government officials and the inquiry report.

On May 16, an X user posted a 19-second video purportedly showing a person examining patients at a hospital.

The user stated that the man checking the patients is actually a sweeper employed at the Wazirabad Tehsil Headquarters (THQ) Hospital in Punjab and pretending to be a doctor.

The video has been viewed over 149,000 times and reposted over 1,000 times to date.

Identical claims also took off on Facebook.

Dr Hassan Tariq, the medical superintendent of Tehsil Headquarters Hospital, verified that the janitor indeed impersonated a doctor at the nursing station and performed tasks such as checking a patient’s blood pressure and adjusting a drip.

However, the medical superintendent added that the janitor and the person who recorded the video had been removed from the job.

Khawaja Imran Nazir, Punjab’s minister for primary and secondary healthcare, and Ali Jan Khan, secretary for specialised healthcare and medical education, corroborated the occurrence and confirmed the staff member’s termination following an inquiry conducted in May.

The janitor in the video has been identified as Abdul Sattar, who admitted to attending to patients at the nursing station.

An inquiry report released on May 14 revealed that two nurses had instructed the janitor to attend to patients in the hospital’s emergency ward.