Guidelines soon on aesthetic treatment, says Liow

The Star Online KUALA LUMPUR: Guidelines on aesthetic medical practice are being drawn up to protect the public from botched jobs.

The draft is expected to be completed this month, which would lead to the setting-up of the National Registry of Medical Practi­tioners Practising Aesthetic Medicine next month.

Health Minister Datuk Seri Liow Tiong Lai said a committee comprising government and private practitioners had been selected to oversee the maintenance of the registry.

He said the registry would have three different categories of medical practitioners providing aesthetic medical services – general practitioners (GPs), dermatologists and other specialists and surgical specialists and plastic surgeons.

“We welcome GPs to practise aesthetic medicine but they need to take courses and be regulated by the ministry,” he said after the 1st Malaysia-Singapore Conference of Aesthetic Medicine opening ceremony here.

The minister said GPs would have to take up a course requiring up to 56 hours of study before they could be validated by the committee to be included in the registry.

Malaysian Society of Aesthetic Medicine president Dr Louis Leh said the main aim was to promote safe aesthetic medicine and cut down on people turning to fly-by-night operators.

“Many don’t know where to go for such treatment and they end up with botched jobs,” he said, adding that beauty consultants were not supposed to handle tasks that required the use of needles or knives.

On whether beauty consultants could hire trained aesthetic doctors to do minor procedures at their centres, he said doctors were not allowed to do so because the Private Facilities and Services Act required them to practise in a proper medical set-up.