Hair transplant quacks put lives at risk
TV executive worried about looks dies in agony after botched procedure
in New Delhi
All that balding Indian television executive Athar Rasheed wanted was to look handsome and get married. But the 30-year-old’s seemingly harmless hair transplant went fatally wrong.
Women have been judged on their appearance for millennia, but in an increasingly materialistic Indian society, men are also feeling pressure to look young and presentable for fear of losing their social standing.
More prematurely balding men are opting for hair transplants as disposable incomes rise and an emphasis on personal appearance becomes stronger.
But in a weakly regulated sector, the procedure – sometimes performed by amateurs self-trained on YouTube – can have deadly results.
Rasheed was the sole breadwinner for his family and aspired to a better life – owning a house and getting his two sisters married. But he developed sepsis after the transplant at a clinic in Delhi
last year, his distraught mother Asiya Begum, 62, said. The swelling spread from his head and he suffered terrible agonies.
“My son died a very painful death. His kidneys stopped functioning and then all his other organs collapsed,” she said.
Armed with photographs showing Rasheed’s bloated face and rashes that broke out all over his body in his final hours, the family lodged a police complaint. Four people, including two men who performed the surgery, were arrested and are awaiting trial.
“I remember my son every day and die a slow death,” Begum said, sitting in her modest oneroom rented flat in a rundown neighbourhood of the capital.
“I lost my son but I don’t want any other mother to lose their child because of the fraudulent practices of a few people.”
Harish Iyer, a social commentator and equal rights activist, said men had started focusing more on grooming as lifestyles change.
“The need to exhibit youth and vitality is echoed by all genders,” Iyer said. “The pressure was always on women to look a certain way and find acceptance, but the needle is now changing.”
A hair transplant involves removing follicles from a dense area of hair, such as the back of the head, and then implanting them on the affected area of the scalp.
Doctor Mayank Singh performs up to 15 surgeries a month at his upscale clinic in New Delhi.
Most of his patients are aged 25 to 35 and looking to either get married or climb the professional ladder, especially in jobs where appearances matter.
The procedure costs 350,000 rupees (HK$33,500), a considerable sum in a country where millions live on less than US$2 a day.
Seedy clinics with untrained staff perform the surgery at a fraction of the cost. Singh, secretary of the Association of Hair Restoration Surgeons of India, said quacks gave the industry a bad name.
“People have this myth that this is a minor procedure, whereas the duration of the surgery is pretty long, running into some six to eight hours,” he said.
Alarmed by the mushrooming number of clinics offering discounted prices, India’s National Medical Commission issued a warning in September.
“Watching in workshops or on YouTube or similar platforms is not adequate training to start aesthetic procedures including hair transplant,” it said.
Singh has a long list of happy customers, including Dr Lakshmi Narayanan, who for years avoided going to social gatherings because of his baldness.
“My hair loss started when I was just 18. I used to avoid taking pictures of myself or even looking in the mirror,” Narayanan, now 29, said. “But not any more. I can interact confidently now and I am looking for a life partner.”