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Risks and Realities: Getting Infected With HIV During Cosmetic Surgery!

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Cosmetic surgery is purposed to uplift facial and other body looks, but nobody anticipates it could be a place of HIV and related ailments infections. It is a scary proposition to beauty seekers and beauticians across the board. This discussion looks at the risks cosmetic surgery poses to potential clients who may get more than what they bargained for.

Cosmetic surgery is an appreciation that the beholder is unhappy with physical attributes. In many ways, it reacts to negative societal perceptions of beauty. Hazing, too, compounds the sad situation. Loose statements about looks may be endured but are taken to heart as challenges for future rectification.

Imagine a woman has to endure regular slurs about her flat butt or about, the tone of her skin, or her bulging cheeks or sagging boobs. Over time, she may feel the compulsion to do something about them. In most cases, doing something is to bow down before a surgeon’s knife, where nip and tuck corrections are made, which may uplift or cause serious damage to the physical attributes.

Amid cosmetic surgery lies the hurdle: costs. Domestic services are out of reach of many aspirants, and overseas options are preferred. So, while the cost component is addressed, like most solutions, it creates a new set of worries: quality. No sooner are costs taken care of. Aspirants do not have enough information to know where such services are available. They may operate without a licence, subjecting their health and lives to shoddy backyard operators.

Read Related: Cosmetic Surgery in Tanzania: The Rise, Risks, and Realities

In such dispensaries, the owners are more sensitive to slashing costs to stay afloat. They may cut corners to a level that compromises the health of their clients who hail from foreign lands and are unlikely to alert authorities over their professional misconduct.

Welcome to Bogus Unregistered Cosmetic Surgery Clinics and Spas Across the World

Unregistered clinical services aim to hide their act behind the watchers, who in this case are the government. Their clients lured for cheaper services ignore, overlook, or are unaware of medical malpractices conducted there that may not attract the wrath of regulators. Commonsense demands that where medical practitioners evade regulations, they have a reason to do so.

Such unregistered spas, clinics, and dispensaries prefer to operate behind the scenes to entice low-income clients who are attracted by low charges while expecting quality services. They do get low prices at the expense of poor quality.

Clients with a tummy tuck may happily go home expecting business as usual but are shocked to find out simple tasks like lifting a bucket of water tend to be a go zone. Those who attempted to rebel learned that the sutures might come out, calling for another operation to fix the gaping hole before entrails gush out.

Also, read Tanzania’s Remarkable Progress Towards Zero New HIV Infections by 2030

Then, there are black market conduits to harvest human organs in a cover-up of cosmetic surgery. Women and men alike under the surgeon’s knife seldom know what happened during sedation. After being neutralized by sleeping pills that were purposed to annul pain, little do the clients know the surgeons have a more high-paying endeavour of reaping where they have not sowe their clientele’s body parts.

It is increasingly getting wake-up calls when recipients of cosmetic surgeries find themselves experiencing nausea, fatigue and insomnia, the medical complications that were non-existent before being knifed.

After a couple of paying for second and third medical advice, the horrors start to ooze out and are not pretty. Cases of missing one kidney, liver, or lung chopped under black market surgeons are snowballing. Some of these sleazy surgeons set up cosmetic surgeries as venues for luring their prey to illegal harvesting of body parts that are highly sought.

Once in full understanding of the evils committed to them, the path to restitution is full of booby traps. Informing authorities in a foreign may subject the victim to arrests for breaking their laws, and at times, the enforcers are on the payroll of dubious medical practitioners. When authorities do their job correctly, medical criminals may opt to cut their losses and close shops only to resurface elsewhere.

The question the victims avoid addressing is whether the hassles are worth the pain and the untold risks involved. In other words, why do they trust humanity’s hands more than God’s?

Some cosmetic surgeries, such as “vampire facials”, are growing popular despite generating plenty of controversies and aspersions. “Vampire facial” procedures are delivered with needles, such as Botox, to iron out wrinkles and fillers to plump lips. A “vampire facial,” or platelet-rich plasma microneedling procedure, involves drawing a client’s blood, separating its components, and then using tiny needles to inject plasma into the face to rejuvenate the skin. Tattoos also require needles. Tattoos, too, are exposed to similar health hazards.

Although HIV transmission from contaminated blood through unsterile injection is a well-known risk, we are now learning new avenues of probable infections involving cosmetic services! In such backyard medical services, the reuse of disposable needles and syringes is common as part of cost-cutting measures exposing clients to untold viral and bacterial diseases. This is not what a beauty seeker expects or bargains for. Cases of not only HIV transmission during intrusive beautifier procedures but also Hepatitis and other viral infections are growing.

Also, read How HIV Is Ravaging Internal Organs, TB, And Spiking Cancer!

While sensitization may help to convince potential victims to risk their own lives in exchange for sexing up their physical attributes but first there is no guarantee the first operation will sate the quest. Most first nip and tucked clients tend to be dissatisfied with their looks, leading to pursuance of a second and a third fixer. Before they know it, their natural personality is irretrievably altered.

The person they see in the mirror does not resemble them, and remorse replaces the urge for another chop on the surgeon’s operating table. Liposuctions lead to what is dubbed BBL smell or bad odour due to poorly removed fat rotting inside out. The consequences are great. Some of the recipients die during or after getting knifed for a variety of reasons beyond the scope of this discourse.

The correlation between beauty and prosperity has been hyped, but the harsh reality is that looks can not trump skills and God-given gifts. You either have them, or you do not. While intrinsic values bring success, we tend to turn the tables upside-down, trumpeting extrinsic values such as physical attributes, and society is our worst enemy.

Government options such as Luganzila are too expensive and may unwittingly contribute to the spread of deadly diseases through acts of omission and commission. Beauty medical services have been commercialised, making them a rich person’s entitlement.

The choices lead to mixed results. If cosmetic surgeries are made cheap, demand will skyrocket, paring off intended advantages. However, alternative options and associated risks will haunt us if it is expensive. Perhaps we should not cede ground on sensitization of the risks involved and repairing lost self-esteem, which acts as a catalyst to bending the rules with grave ramifications.

The author is a Development Administration specialist in Tanzania with over 30 years of practical experience, and has been penning down a number of articles in local printing and digital newspapers for some time now.

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