A doctor who secretly gave anti-impotence tablets to three patients has been told he will not be able to practice medicine for a year.

Dr Valiyakalayil Ramu wrote false prescriptions for a drug used to combat erectile dysfunction to give to men who visited his surgery in Halfway.

The GP, who lives in Borden, wrote out prescriptions for Cialis in the name of a 65-year-old patient who was not aware of the prescriptions.

Ramu gave away 44 tablets of Cialis to the three young men who could not afford the pills and were trying to hide their impotence from their wives.

He was arrested in May last year and after an investigation by counter fraud officers appeared before Sittingbourne Magistrates’ Court in September. He admitted two charges of obtaining property by deception and one of fraud by false representation.

He was sentenced to 200 hours’ community service and ordered to pay £600 costs.

In July last year he was suspended from practising while an investigation was carried out by the General Medical Council pending a hearing by its fitness to practice panel.

The panel heard Ramu made out his first fake prescription on October 5, 2006, and walked out of a local pharmacy with eight of the impotence pills.

Ramu was suspended for a further 12 months.

See this week's Times Guardian for full story.