Cosmetic treatments don’t really matter, right? It’s just silly vain women who have them and if they end up botched, disfigured or even dead - that’s on them for being so vain.
This appears to be the attitude of government policy on the regulation of cosmetic procedures. In mainland Europe and North America, anyone caught administering invasive procedures for cosmetic purposes without being a registered healthcare professional will face a custodial sentence. In the UK, however, these people don’t even need to hide what they are up to: they can set up shops on high streets all around the country, concentrated in some of the most deprived parts of our cities, and the Government just lets them get on with it.
In September Alice Webb, a 33-year-old mother of five, died after having filler injections performed by a non-medically qualified "aesthetics practitioner" in a Gloucestershire clinic that looked more like the garden shed. In May this year, an unnamed woman was admitted to hospital with botched filler injection carried out in a hotel room in Glasgow. The "practitioner" was issued with a prohibition notice from Environmental Health telling them not to do it again, but only if they breach the prohibition notice will they face any real charges or repercussions.
This is simply not good enough.
People who are not on a statutory medical register have no business carrying out medical procedures or dishing out medicines.
The medical profession has been drawing this evolving disaster to the attention of our politicians for years, but our concerns have fallen on deaf ears. It’s been like watching a car crash in slow motion. The politicians knew that serious injuries and death were coming because we’ve been telling them so, but there has been no motivation to do anything about it.
Scottish Government minister Mairi Gougeon let the mask slip when she replied to a parliamentary question "all cosmetic procedures carry a risk of potential harm regardless of who performs them". That may be so. But there is a reason that the barber surgeons disappeared in 1745 when the civilised world realised that complications were just a little bit less likely when medical procedures were carried out by properly trained members of the medical profession. Why can’t our politicians of today see that?
I often wonder why our Government seems so reluctant to act on something that appears to be so blatantly in the public interest. Is it because society places so little value on the lives of young, vulnerable women who end up in these salons in the east end of Glasgow? Because make no mistake; the women being maimed and killed by this are not affluent, well-educated middle-class women who will make sure they get safe care in a licensed clinic, from a real doctor. Would our Government be so lackadaisical about putting a stop to this madness if it were affluent, middle-class men who were being disfigured and killed? I don’t suggest this is its conscious thought process, but I firmly believe subconscious bias plays a role. It’s time for politicians of all colours to unite and protect women from the hands of unqualified "aesthetics practitioners".
Dr Darren McKeown is a Glasgow-based cosmetic surgeon
Agenda is a column for outside contributors. Contact: agenda@theherald.co.uk
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