Consumers of aesthetic medicine are being urged to request original product packaging before receiving aesthetic treatments to avoid illegal or counterfeit drugs.
With several clinics of aesthetic medicine investigated for alleged use of counterfeits, consumers are cautioned to be on alert when they encounter advertisements touting “US FDA approved” or “being used by Korean stars.
An aesthetic medicine group in Tainan has recently been charged with using prohibited drugs and tax evasion, with the prosecutors reportedly finding at least 247 boxes of unapproved hyaluronic acid injections and two illicit catabolic enzyme injections.
A plastic surgery clinic in Taipei is being investigated for allegedly using unapproved Clostridium botulinum, with the operator reportedly implicating an upstream supplier for providing the allegedly illicit treatments.
A pharmaceutical company selling legal C botulinum treatments said that most of the illicit drugs in Taiwan’s aesthetic medicine market are from China and South Korea.
According to the unnamed company, doctors independently bring back drugs from South Korea, diluting and repackaging them as approved medicines.
A woman surnamed Chen, a regular botox injection user, said she once experienced cheek inflammation after an injection.
Su Yi-chun (蘇宜君), a lawyer with Lee and Li law firm, said it is difficult to evaluate the damage caused by counterfeit or banned drugs in Taiwan unless the consumers keep the relevant evidence.
Although the fines to be imposed in these related cases are relatively heavy in Taiwan, the final rulings of judicial institutions, however, are light compared with the US, with many cases ending with settlements.
Taiwan Dermatological Association Chairman Yang Chih-hsun (楊志勛) said that the Ministry of Health and Welfare has approved just two kinds of botox.
Any drugs, even if they are approved in foreign countries that are not approved for entering the market by the health authority are counterfeit and prohibited drugs.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,