A 46-year-old woman has died in Hong Kong and three others are fighting for their lives following a beauty parlour treatment that involved blood transfusion, highlighting a lack of regulation in the city’s cosmetic industry.
The cases have prompted an investigation by the police and medical authorities, and renewed calls by health experts for tighter
regulation of Hong Kong’s beauty industry.
“Yes, the woman aged 46 died on Wednesday of septic shock,” a government spokeswoman said, Reuters reports.
Three other women, aged 56, 59 and 60, were in hospital with the eldest in critical condition.
Septic shock is normally caused by bacterial infection and can result in respiratory and organ failure, and even death.
The four had recently undergone a complicated blood transfusion procedure at the DR beauty chain, according to government statements, in a treatment that was meant to boost their immune system and appearance.
The women paid about Hong kong dollars ($6,400) for the procedure, which experts say is at best an experimental treatment for cancer patients and which has not been shown to have any aesthetic application so far.
DR said in a statement on Wednesday that the procedures were carried out by a doctor who was not employed by the parlour.
The procedure required their blood to be taken to isolate and culture certain types of immune cells.
These cytokine-induced killer cells were then injected back into the women together with their own blood plasma.
The four quickly fell ill with fever, dizziness and diaorrhea.
In an earlier blood sample taken from the woman who died, health officials found Mycobacterium abscessus, a superbug that is notoriously difficult to kill.
Although the direct cause of the woman’s death has yet to be confirmed, experts say it is likely to have been bacterial infection.
“They now have to find out where the bacterial contamination occurred in this whole process.
“Did it happen when the blood was drawn, during the culture process or when it was re-injected into the body?” William Chui, president of the Society of Hospital Pharmacists in Hong Kong said.
The cases raise fresh questions on how governments in many places in Asia regulate doctors’ conduct and sale of medicines, but exercise little or no control over what goes on in beauty parlours or what goes into “healthcare’’ products.
In Singapore in 2002, 15 women developed liver problems and one died after consuming Chinese-made slimming pills that were
later found to contain two undeclared ingredients.
One of the patents, an actress, survived only after a liver transplant.
Felice Lieh Mak, a leading medical expert in Hong Kong and former chairman of the Medical Council, said, “We hope that this tragedy will result in some attempt at making a legislation, or at least working towards legislating and defining what medical treatment is.”
Source : punchng[dot]com
Executive Secretary, National Commission for Colleges of Education, Prof. Mohammed Junaid