Serves as warning for all

28-year-old Anna Teoh (name changed to protect identity), opted for a breast augmentation by a ‘surgeon’ from Taiwan who was in Malaysia for a holiday, but had to undergo an emergency double mastectomy, due to severe infection, as reported in The Straits Times.

“The problem is, some of these women did not go to a properly certified surgeon. They sought out ‘doctors’ or ‘surgeons’ through advertisements in the newspaper. In some cases, the ‘doctors’ had conspired with beauticians to be recommended to potential customers. When the patients realise their lives are in danger, they seek our help and we refer them for medical treatment or for legal advice when the cases involved certified surgeons,” MCA Public Service and Complaints Department, Datuk Michael Chong, told the paper.

He said these women would go for the surgery even when it was done in places such as hotel rooms, the backroom of a beauty salon or a house. “No self respecting doctor or surgeon would operate in hotel rooms. But these women choose to listen to their friends or to beauticians.”

To curb this problem, the Health Ministry ruled last October that breast implants, liposuction, eyelid surgery, laser and light-based therapies and hair transplants should not be done by private general practitioners. The restriction extended to the use of vitamin c, placental extract, stem cells and growth hormone treatments.