COSMETIC OP BATTLE
EXCLUSIVE
HEALTH Secretary Jeremy Hunt faces Commons pressure this week to ban unqualified cosmetic surgeons responsible for many botched operations.
Under the present system any doctor can do facelifts, nose jobs, breast implants and tummy tucks.
So many operations go wrong that the Government promised to bring in new laws three years ago – but nothing happened. Now Labour MP Kevan Jones is to launch a bill in support of a Royal College of Surgeons’ call for cosmetic doctors to be licensed.
He said: “The Government is dragging its feet. When things go wrong, patients should be able to take action against their surgeons.”
After 47,000 British women were told their French breast implants were at risk of rupturing four years ago, NHS Medical Director Prof Sir Bruce Keogh recommended that cosmetic surgeons should have certificates of fitness.
Cosmetic surgery is a £3.6billion-a-year business making it attractive to dodgy clinics and medics.
Mother-of-two Dawn Knight, 48, from Mr Jones’s North Durham constituency, has trouble closing her eyes following £3,500 cosmetic surgery in 2012.
She cannot claim against her Italian surgeon because he was uninsured and has gone bankrupt. She said: “This industry is mutilating women.” A GLASS serving bottle owned by Gulliver’s Travels author Jonathan Swift 300 years ago is expected to fetch £7,000 at auction. CAT Maggie May got stuck in her owner’s stairlift then had to be sedated and freed by an RSPCA man using a jack, in Kendal, Cumbria.