Ministry of Health issues warning to Christchurch man claiming to be a doctor

The Ministry of Health has reportedly issued a warning to a Christchurch man claiming to be a doctor.

Machi Mannu, who co-founded Marvel Health, incorrectly claimed he was a doctor, a Fair Go investigation revealed.

Marvel Health has clinics in Christchurch’s Durham St, Rolleston and Rangiora.

Its headquarters are in Cashmere in Christchurch, where it offers a bio-magnetic diagnostic body scanning service.

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The Marvel Health website says Mannu is a medical doctor, researcher, and author who is a British resident in Spain.

The Advertising Standards Authority has upheld several complaints about Marvel Health’s claims in 2020 and 2021, including one about newspaper advertisements for the company.

“The advertisement made therapeutic claims involving diagnosis and treatment which were unsubstantiated,” the ASA said.

“The board said the advertisement used language which was likely to confuse and mislead consumers and prey on vulnerable and elderly audiences.”

Fair Go reported the clinics use biomagnetic resonance modelling (BRM), with the website claiming that anyone with a health problem can have a scan to “reveal the exact illness and its causes”.

It claims that BRM is “equivalent to 50 blood tests, multiple CT scans, MRI scans, full allergy testing, toxicology and microbiology, with more accurate information than any traditional forms of testing”.

An appointment lasts 45 minutes and costs $550. Patients are then offered natural therapies to treat their condition. Fair Go said the cost of these can be more than $1000.

A covert operation established that Mannu claimed directly to patients that he had practised as a doctor overseas.

Fair Go was able to confirm with the medical councils of the UK, Spain and New Zealand that he had never registered in any country, and therefore couldn’t work as a GP or as a doctor in a hospital in any of those countries.

Mannu told Fair Go he had completed his medical training in Nigeria 20 years ago, but had never practised as a registered doctor anywhere.

He said this didn’t affect his ability to call himself a doctor in New Zealand because he was working outside traditional medicine.

However, the Ministry of Health has clear guidelines that if a person is not registered as a doctor in New Zealand then they can’t practise as a doctor, or even imply that they are a doctor.

The ministry contacted Mannu directly to warn him that he should not use the term doctor on his website or when talking to his patients. However, as of Monday the website still says he is a doctor.