UK-based surgeon Nur Amalina exposes quack dentist

PETALING JAYA: UK-trained Dr Nur Amalina Che Bakri has spoken out against cheap braces that were offered on social media.

A tweet of a woman offering to install braces for only RM170, as part of a “year-end promotion”, which had gone viral, attracted her attention, and Dr Nur Amalina became suspicious.

When she asked the woman if she was a certified dentist, the woman with the twitter handle @ayinqess immediately deleted her post.

Dr Nur Amalina told netizens to report the matter to the Health Ministry.

“If anyone managed to SS (screenshot), please report to @KKMPutrajaya (Health Ministry), thank you,” she tweeted.

Dr Nur Amalina is a Malaysian-born surgeon in London who was first cast into the public eye when she scored 17As in the SPM exams in 2004.

She then obtained a scholarship from Bank Negara to study medicine in the United Kingdom.

The tweet offering the cheap braces installation was also slammed by netizens.

“It’s so cheap to install fake braces,” said Putri Aminatul.

“The tweet was immediately deleted. It’s obvious it was a lie,” Syazaibrahim tweeted.

The Star’s Malay-language portal mStar Online called the woman’s number, posing as an interested customer. The woman claimed she had just started offering braces installation services in Penang and Kedah a month back.

“Braces are expensive, so we’re offering a service to those who are on a budget,” she said, adding she would perform the installation at a location convenient to her customers.

When asked about the process, the woman said she learnt the technique from a “trained individual”.

“We don’t offer treatment (like they do at) clinics, but we learnt to install braces from those who have been trained,” she said.

The woman also claimed that the process would only take a day and her customers would not feel pain.

Cases of quack dentists garnered much public attention when vocational college student Nur Farahanis Ezatty Adli was found to have operated an unregistered private dental clinic in Melaka.

In October last year, the 20-year-old was fined RM70,000 and served six days of her one-month jail term.