Polish police said Tuesday they had arrested a 45-year-old farmer accused of posing as a gynaecologist in a hospital and illegally peddling "morning-after" contraceptive pills.

A nurse had become suspicious of the man, dressed in a white coat and sporting a stethoscope, as he was apparently scouting for customers in a hospital in the western city of Poznan.

The "doctor" managed to get away before security guards could catch him but was arrested the following day along with a suspected accomplice, a 60-year-old unemployed man who allegedly sold the same pills on the Internet.

"Women face a serious health risk if they take medication from a dubious source," hospital director Ryszard Starkiewicz told the Polish news channel TVN24.

Morning-after pills, which can be used up to 72 hours after sexual intercourse to stop pregnancy, are widely on sale without prescription in the majority of European Union countries.

But their use is strictly controlled in deeply Catholic Poland where abortion is only permitted in cases of rape, incest, danger to the mother's life or irreversible malformation of the foetus.