HARARE: The Medical and Dental Practitioners Council of Zimbabwe (MDPCZ) has confirmed that Defence minister Sydney Sekeramayi has undergone specialist medical training and has qualifications from Sweden that meet local standards or legislation to practice as a medical doctor.

MDPCZ’s revelation published on its website is seen shaming war veterans leader, Christopher Mutsvangwa, who claimed recently that the Defence minister was a bogus physician.

The garrulous war veterans’ leader had accused Sekeramayi of masquerading as a medical doctor, of allegedly failing to sit for medical examinations or gain registration with the local medical board and slowly assuming the identity of a real doctor.

But the MDPCZ — whose responsibility is to register, educate and discipline the medical and dental professions in Zimbabwe — confirmed on its web page that Sekeramayi, 73, has an acquired right to practice as a general practitioner or medical specialist in Zimbabwe.

 Sekeramayi, whose registration number is M062440, has a primary qualification as a medical doctor from Stockholm in Sweden, acquired in 1973.

This flies in the face of claims by Mutsvangwa.

Mutsvangwa, a former Zimbabwean ambassador to China, threw into question Sekeramayi’s bonafides after First Lady Grace Mugabe revealed at a Bindura rally last weekend that President Robert Mugabe summoned the Swedish-trained medical doctor because he felt he was on his deathbed after falling sick from food poisoning, in an apparent jibe at Vice President Emmerson Mnangagwa, whose allies have gone to town with claims that he was deliberately poisoned by political foes at a Gwanda rally last month.

“Everyone knows that he is not a qualified doctor and I want to challenge him to bring his registration with the Medical and Health Allied Professions,” Mutsvangwa, a former War Veterans minister, said. daily news