Albanians scarred by rogue cosmetics
Emira Sela covers her face with her hand to hide a disfiguring abscess, the traumatic result of unregulated cosmetic treatments now rampant across Albania.
The 31-year-old began to worry when wrinkles appeared on her face. Sela’s hairdresser told her that a simple injection, costing around 60 euros ($65), would banish the signs of aging.
“She assured me that I would not risk anything. She even listed well-known names” of women who had undergone such treatment, said Sela.
“I did not think twice, I trusted her without asking questions,” said the blonde woman with green eyes, her voice trembling.
Albanian hair and beauty salons lacking expertise and medical supervision are offering such cosmetic treatments, unregulated in a legal vacuum, much to the alarm of qualified doctors.
A single injection of a product whose content and dosage Sela knew nothing about was enough to ruin her life in late August.
Despite antibiotics she has permanent pain, fever and nausea, while the abscess on her right cheek forces her eye to half-close and her face is nearly paralyzed.
“I am so disfigured that I tried to commit suicide,” said Sela, who lost her job in a bank. Her only hope now is corrective surgery at an Italian hospital, scheduled for this month.
“There are more and more impostors with syringes,” said Pa na jot Papa, a plastic surgeon at a private clinic in Tirana.
“The problem is also the products ... Forbidden in Europe, they enter illegally from Turkey or Asia.”
Eriona Shehu, a dermatologist at Tirana’s university hospital, said the desire to look like voluptuous US reality television star Kim Kardashian was “destroying the lives of young Albanian girls looking for beauty”.
Albanian doctors say the typical age of clients for such procedures is between 16 and 28.
In the country of about 3 million people, the demand for cosmetic interventions rose more than 50 percent in 2015, according to a study published by Albania’s economic magazine Monitor.
Papa says he has treated a dozen young women aged between 20 and 27 who suffered complications after having their lips and cheekbones swollen with injected liquid silicone for 40 to 50 euros.
The product has been banned for cosmetic use in countries such as Italy and France for more than 15 years.
Authorities are set to tackle the problem with a draft law to control cosmetic products and beauty salons, which is due to be introduced in parliament in the next few months.
The regulations could go some way to easing the trauma of women like Elisa Lura, a 22-year-old economics student.
She paid 50 eur os to a neighborhood salon for permanent eyebrow tattoos, which went wrong. But the laser made things much worse.
“Everything is spoiled!” she said of her face, now covered with painful scars.