High-risk salons fined and warned
Invasive treatments such as liposuction or blood transfusions may soon be banned at premises without life-saving equipment
Almost 500 beauty parlours have been warned about aggressive marketing tactics that exaggerate the effects of high-risk beauty procedures and four have been fined up to HK$20,000.
Two women have died and three others have been seriously injured in a series of blunders at beauty salons since 2012.
In response to these cases, the government plans to propose a new law this year to ban private premises without emergency life-saving facilities from carrying out complicated or especially risky treatments.
Ahead of the planned new law, the department in November issued advisory notes requiring 15 cosmetic procedures with safety concerns be performed only by medical practitioners.
"Those practitioners who carry out these procedures without a doctor's licence may breach the Medical Registration Ordinance," Department of Health director Dr Constance Chan Hon-yee told the Legislative Council health panel yesterday.
Secretary for Food and Health Dr Ko Wing-man said the government would move legislation this year to impose a licensing system on private premises used as operating theatres.