Beauty review

The death of a woman due to a beauty treatment in Hong Kong should come as a wake-up call for our own country too.

Recently, a 46-year-old woman in Hong Kong, who received a treatment at a beauty clinic, died due to septic shock. Two of three other women are also in serious or critical condition. The women received a treatment that draws blood from the person, processes it and then infuses it back into the person — a treatment primarily used for cancer patients. While authorities are uncertain whether any of the women had been diagnosed with cancer prior to the treatment, the woman, now dead, contracted the bacterium Mycobacterium abscessus in her blood and internal organs. The beauty treatment should come as a wake-up call not just for China, but also for our own country.

Here, where women are often obsessed with having the perfect hair and skin, we should be reminded of the dangers that untested chemicals can possess. Likewise, we should be more wary of beauticians and self-proclaimed experts administering treatments. While high-end beauty parlours might take caution in regularly sterilising equipment prior to using it for each client, most of the corner beauty salons would rather save money than spend it on materials such as alcohol to eliminate the spread of germs that might prove to be contagious.

This story from our neighbouring country is a call to women and men who attend such salons, to health department officials who have not been keeping check on hygiene and to the owners and workers of these salons. In a country already plagued with multiple ordeals, why not try to help mitigate the plight of disease? By using sterile equipment, the most basic requirement of the time, one might just be saving lives. Furthermore, beauticians who are primarily trained in how to lure customers and more so in the business of operating a salon should instead be trained in how to properly administer products and what their chemical properties are. They should also be cognisant of the fact that clients might have allergies or previous conditions before providing treatment. We must accept that we are a developing country as well as the fact that this one further development needs to occur in order for us to advance.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 22^nd,  2012.