Nose job shouldn't be fatal attraction

On Jan 3, a 19-year-old girl went to a plastic surgery hospital in Guiyang, Southwest China's Guizhou province, for a nose job. Seven hours later, her family was told she had died. Thepaper.cn comments:

The case has really shocked the public. It is widely known that cosmetic surgery, however minor it might be, poses potential risks that might threaten a person's health even life, but the death of the girl is still something that the public cannot accept. It is really hard for people to accept that a person might die in the pursuit of beauty.

The case also exposes some problems in the plastic surgery industry. Although many plastic surgery facilities call themselves hospitals they do not have any medical licenses. They just use hospital in their names to make people think they are true hospitals.

Plastic surgery is considered a surgical operation, and only doctors with proper training should undertake the procedures in properly equipped operating theaters. However, many "doctors" in the plastic surgery "hospitals" just do the operations in normal rooms and lack any formal training.

Worse, the supervision over the plastic surgery industry is rather loose. In some previously reported cases, local health departments passed the buck to commercial management bureaus, saying the plastic surgery institutions are not hospitals, while the latter passed it back by saying they involve health risks.

According to official data, the value of China's plastic surgery industry is second only to that of the United States. But as the industry grows, supervision has failed to keep pace with it. Tougher regulation of the industry is needed to prevent people's lives being put at risk.

From the quality of the practitioners, to the certification of the institutions and the tightening of supervision so there are no loopholes, the cosmetic surgery industry must be better regulated to ensure people's safety comes first.