A DOCTOR “put her career before honour” when she failed to return to work in her home country of Kenya after being funded to study radiology in Ireland for four years, a Medical Council fitness to practise inquiry was told yesterday.
Dr Irene Mwangi, the inquiry heard, was funded to study for a radiology fellowship at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland through a trust established by Joseph Linders in memory of his late wife Dr Dara O’Halpin, who worked as a radiologist at Temple Street hospital.
Participants in the scholarship programme were given to understand they would have to work for five years at a Nairobi hospital on completion of the course.
Dr Mwangi completed the course, a farewell lunch was held for her in Mr Linders’s house and she was expected to begin work at the Mater Hospital, Nairobi, on August 1st, 2008, but she never turned up, the inquiry was told.
Medical director of the hospital Sr Marian Dolan said she sat beside Dr Mwangi at the farewell lunch and was given to understand she was travelling to Kenya to work in the hospital the following month. When she didn’t turn up, the hospital was going to register her as a missing person.
Sr Dolan said she was “dumbfounded” and “appalled” when Dr Mwangi eventually e-mailed the hospital to say she was not planning to work there at all.
“I do believe that she put her career before honour,” she said.
The Nairobi hospital, the College of Surgeons and solicitors for Mr Linders informed the Medical Council, alleging she breached a memorandum of understanding that had been entered into when she was awarded the scholarship worth €245,000.
She now faces charges of professional misconduct. Her evidence will be heard by video link from San Diego. She has already said the allegations against her are baseless.
Oisín Quinn SC, for Dr Mwangi, told the inquiry there was no document with the terms of the scholarship on it.
