Toll of surgical tourism

FIXING botched plastic surgery by foreign clinics is costing the NHS millions of pounds each year, doctors warned yesterday.

Cut price operations and cheap flights are fuelling a rise in ‘surgical tourism’, British surgeons say.

But on return to the UK wounds from the operations can turn septic – forcing patients to go to A&E and causing ‘a huge financial burden to the NHS’.

The British Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons said that at just one hospital – the Royal Free in London – 1 patients had turned up with complications, costing £ 8 ,000. Ash Mosahebi, a surgeon at the hospital who looked at the figures, said: ‘This is happening across the country.’