Thumbs up for new beauty procedure guidelines

SunDaily: PETALING JAYA (Nov 20, 2011): The guidelines to regulate the booming beauty industry announced by the Ministry of Health are a much needed step towards safer aesthetic procedures, says the Society for Anti-Aging, Aesthetic and Regenerative Medicine Malaysia.
Its president Prof Dr Selvaraj Subramaniam told theSun recently that proper medical knowledge was needed as all medical procedures come with risks, and patients have no recourse if they are treated by unqualified people.
"The patient's safety and medical ethics play an important role in the decision to go ahead with the procedure or not, and risks and adverse effects need to be explained to patients.
"Sterility issues and whether the products used are expired or contaminated can lead to infection and deformity when things go wrong, and can even be fatal," he said.
The new guidelines, which are to be ready next month, will allow authorities to clamp down on beauty salons offering medical procedures that only trained practitioners are allowed to perform.
All procedures that require medical and dental practitioners to be present will be listed out and unregistered practitioners will be prohibited from performing any injective or laser procedures.
"With the new guidelines, it will be clearer for local governments and the authorities to know which kind of procedures beauty salons are not allowed to perform," Health Minister Datuk Seri Liow Tiong Lai said.
Under the new guidelines, action will be taken against beauty salons offering unauthorised procedures and the Health Ministry will also carry out random checks.
Selvaraj said patient education was the key to solving the problem of beauty quacks and ensuring those who seek treatment are provided proper services.
"Educating the patients together with the legislation set in place is the key to eliminating abuses that may arise from unqualified and untrained persons.
"Someone untrained performing an aesthetic procedure can be likened to one who reads about and watches an appendix surgery, and then does it.
"Only by training and experience do doctors become competent, otherwise, it's like playing with fire," he said.