Vietnamese customers pay price for fake cosmetics

Nguyen Thu Ha frequently suggests a shopping excursion to Hanoi’s Hom Market for cosmetics because of reduced prices of the products accessible.

The enterprise worker, doesn’t know the origin of the cosmetics that she and her friends purchase enthusiastically.

She does not realise that they can harm her cutis.

"I belive most are smuggled from China despite the labels that are written in Japanese, Korean, English and German," she says.

The young woman and her friends don’t shop in a market of guaranteed brand names because the cost is too overly higher for most city-dwelling Vietnamese women.

The customers does not anticipate the worst. Some woman was admitted to City’s Dermatology and Venereology Hospital in a decisive state some time ago after she made up her face with cream bought at the Ky Hoa Market.

The face of the 27-year-old was seriously swollen and her skin ulcerated.

The hospital gets 5 to 7 such cosmetics victims each week.

"A lot of the patients have used black-market cosmetics: No origin, bad quality and home-made cream," says Dr Ly Huu Duc.

Ha Noi Dermatology and Venereology Hospital deputy director Nguyen Thi Thao says the number of patients allergic to cosmetics treated at her institution has increased since 2003-2004.

"Most incidents involve the use of cream products of no known origin or products processed at home by individuals who are not trained."

Cosmetic allergy springs from the susceptibility of the user and poor-quality products.

Dong Thap Provincial police picked up a woman allegedly selling home-made whitening cream in the Chau Thanh District’s Nha Man Market.

They think the home-made cream caused the death of Nguyen Ngoc Bich, 15, who died three days earlier.

The teenager have purchased two boxes of Quynh Huong cream at the market and used it to her full body.

After an hour, she had a temperature of 40 degrees and vomited.

Admitted to the local Sa Dec General Hospital in critical condition, she died six hours later. The hospital’s emergency unit head, Dr Vu Kim Long, said blood tests showed her white corpuscle count was six times higher than average.

Dermatologists say home-made whitening cream is a mixture of Salicylic and Acid Benzoic Acids and too much will cause the skin too shed and cause dehydration and the body to over heat.