How to Verify a Foreign MBBS Program Will Be Recognized Before You Enroll

Why one accreditation check is not enough

Families evaluating an overseas MBBS program often check one thing, usually whether the university looks legitimate online, and stop there. Getting a medical degree recognized back home in an ASEAN country runs through several separate checks, and a school clears one and fails another often enough to matter. Work through all of them before committing years of tuition and time.

Step 1: Confirm your school is in the World Directory of Medical Schools

The World Directory of Medical Schools (WDOMS) is the global reference list of medical schools, maintained jointly by the World Federation for Medical Education (WFME) and the Foundation for Advancement of International Medical Education and Research (FAIMER). Most ASEAN medical councils, including Indonesia's Konsil Kedokteran Indonesia, treat WDOMS listing as a baseline requirement before opening an evaluation file for your degree.

Search by the exact faculty name, not the university's general name, since a university has some faculties listed and others missing. Do this before applying, and save a screenshot of the listing with the date, since directory entries change over time.

Step 2: Check accreditation, not just directory listing

Being listed in WDOMS confirms the school exists in the directory. It does not by itself confirm the school holds accreditation from a recognized body. Since January 1, 2024, US-facing certification through ECFMG requires the school's national or regional accrediting agency to itself hold recognition from the World Federation for Medical Education (WFME) or the National Committee on Foreign Medical Education and Accreditation (NCFMEA), under the Recognized Accreditation Policy .

Even if your goal is practicing in an ASEAN country rather than the US, this accreditation layer works as a useful signal of program quality, and several ASEAN medical councils reference similar international accreditation standards in their own evaluation criteria.

Step 3: Check your own country's medical council list directly

WDOMS listing and WFME-recognized accreditation matter, but your home country's medical council makes the final call on whether your specific degree is registrable. Each ASEAN country runs its own list:

• Malaysia: the Malaysian Medical Council (MMC) maintains the Second Schedule of the Medical Act 1971 , currently listing 337 recognized medical institutions across 36 countries. A degree missing from this exact list is not automatically registrable for full MMC registration, even as a real, accredited program.

• Indonesia: Konsil Kedokteran Indonesia (KKI) evaluates your transcript, curriculum syllabus, and school accreditation individually, using WDOMS listing as a starting filter rather than an automatic pass.

• Vietnam: the Ministry of Health evaluates foreign qualifications case by case under the 2023 Law on Medical Examination and Treatment, checking whether your training matches Vietnamese standards.

• Thailand: the Medical Council of Thailand keeps its own list of recognized foreign medical schools, separate from WDOMS, and applies additional exam requirements on top of recognition.

Contact your home country's council directly, by email if needed, and ask specifically whether your target school and faculty currently appear on their registrable list. Get the answer in writing where possible.

Step 4: Look past accreditation into clinical training quality

A school meets every accreditation checkbox and still delivers weak clinical training, if it lacks enough teaching hospital placements or patient contact hours for its class size. Ask specific questions before enrolling:

• Which hospitals does the school use for clinical rotations, and are they affiliated directly or through informal arrangements.

• How many students share each clinical rotation group.

• What language do clinical rotations run in, and does that match what your home licensing exam expects.

• Does the school connect you with recent graduates from your home country who completed licensing back home.

Warning signs worth extra scrutiny

Watch for agents or recruiters who guarantee recognition without directing you to check WDOMS and your home council yourself, schools that resist sharing their WDOMS listing or accreditation certificate directly, and programs that cannot name the specific teaching hospitals used for clinical rotations.

None of these signs alone proves a problem, but together they are reasons to verify everything independently before paying any deposit.

A legitimate school has no reason to discourage you from checking WDOMS or contacting your home medical council directly, since these checks are free and public.

Step 5: Recheck recognition status every year you are enrolled

Recognition status is not permanent.

Accrediting agencies get added to or dropped from WFME's recognized list, medical councils update their registrable lists, and WDOMS entries change. Set a yearly reminder to recheck your school's status on WDOMS and on your home country's medical council page for the entire length of your degree, not just once before you enroll.

If something changes while you are already enrolled

If your school's accreditation status changes partway through your degree, contact your home country's medical council directly and ask how this affects graduates already in the program. Councils sometimes grandfather in students who enrolled before a change, but this is not guaranteed, so get a written answer rather than assuming.