The First Collegiate Court of National District made up by three judges absolved Venezuelan Karen Moya Boada from charges that she was carrying out plastic surgery procedures in the country despite being unauthorized to practice medicine in the Dominican Republic. The preliminary report says the judges argued the prosecutors did not present sufficient evidence. Investigative journalist Nuria Piera had presented evidence on her TV program that Moya Boada was practicing medicine in the Dominican Republic putting women in danger as she questioned the qualifications of the woman to do so.
Piera questioned the supposed title the Venezuelan owned up to that accredited her as a surgeon in Venezuela. Nuria Piera had presented evidence that the association of plastic surgery of Venezuela did not list the woman as a surgeon in Venezuela. Piera said that Moya Boada had owned up to having a title as a surgeon from the Universidad Central de Venezuela.
Piera says that the laws are clear for practicing plastic surgery in the Dominican Republic. You need to be a graduate in medicine, with two years of internship in general surgery, three years in plastic surgery in a national or international university recognized by the Dominican Society of Plastic Surgery. Piera proved that Moya Boada was not registered as a member or an aspirant to be member in the Venezuelan society of plastic surgery.
Furthermore, Piera in her followup on the Moya Boada case on Saturday, 17 August 2024 on Channel 9, said that Dominican laws require that foreign medics receive the homologation of their foreign title before practicing in the country. This means that foreign doctors who want to practice here have to register in a local university and take Dominican subjects, and then complete a year of internship to be accredited here. And then the interested persons need to take the documentation from the local university to the Ministry of Superior Education to be then awarded the exequatur, that is the permission to practice here. Moya Boada never did this. She also had to register in the Dominican Medical Association. Moya Boada never did this, either, Piera said on her Saturday evening program.
Piera presented evidence of prescription notes titled Dr. Karla Moya Boada, despite her using the stamp and name of a fellow physician. Piera explained Moya Boada’s prescriptions carried the stamp, name and exequatur number of another physician so these could be valid for insurance purposes, clearly because she was not accredited to practice medicine in the Dominican Republic.
At the start of the trial, Piera said that Moya Boada argued she was limited to administrative matters, when videos taken from the woman’s social networks showed her operating to promote her work to future customers.
Nuria Piera reiterated that the doctors’ office where Moya Boada worked was not authorized by the Ministry of Public Health.
After the TV report appeared, the office was closed. But Nuria Piera denounced that Moya Boada went to work at the Centro de Salud Reproductiva Integral y Atención Femenina (Cemerafc) located at Av. Jose Contreras.
25 September 2024, Moya Boada was arrested when she was about to take a flight via the Punta Cana International Airport. She had an impediment to leave the country.
Piera says she is awaiting to receive the ruling from the court to better understand the elements on which the judges established there was not sufficient proof, so she can carry out a follow-up investigation. The ruling could be appealed.
Piera expressed her concern that the case of Elizabeth Silverio, a woman who posed as neuro-scientist and treated children with autism at her center, has also been absolved by local justice despite major evidence against her. More so, she complained of the impunity also granted to those in the case of the US$92 million in bribes, Odebrecht officers said they had paid in the Dominican Republic to ensure construction works from the government. All those originally mentioned in the case have also been absolved in the Dominican judiciary.
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Nuria Piera
19 August 2024