Vietnam still wrestling with dangerous products
The Viet Nam Drug Administration has introduced regulations to ensure the quality standards of both imported and domestic cosmetics, which make the company or individual who sells the cosmetics responsible for the safety of users. This follows a number of reports that users of unlicensed or counterfeit products suffered allergies, disfigurements and even in one case death, after using these products.
The Viet Nam Drug Administration has introduced regulations to ensure the quality standards of both imported and domestic cosmetics, which make the company or individual who sells the cosmetics responsible for the safety of users. This follows a number of reports that users of unlicensed or counterfeit products suffered allergies, disfigurements and even in one case death, after using these products.
Cosmetics in Viet Nam usually have three sources: ‘Made-in-China’ imitations of international brand names; cosmetics produced in developing countries; and genuine products. Chinese imitations are most favoured because of their low cost.
In newspaper interviews Vietnamese customers around HCM City have indicated how they obtained cosmetics and allied products. Nguyen Thu Ha visits nearby Ha Noi's Hom Market for cosmetics because of the variety and low prices of the products available, but the factory worker whose monthly salary totals VND3m admits she does not know the origin of the cosmetics that she and her friends buy so often. The young woman and her friends do not go to shops that carry stocks of guaranteed brand names because the cost is too high for most city-dwelling Vietnamese women. Hom Market vendor Nguyen Thi Chanh admitted that she buys her supplies wholesale from Lang Son border-region traders with a minimum of paper work, saying: "I think most are illegally imported from China despite the labels that are written in Japanese, Korean, English and German. But many have no label at all."
The results of using these products however can be distressing. For example a woman was admitted to HCM City's Dermatology and Venereology Hospital in a critical condition after applying to her face a cream bought at the Ky Hoa market for VND 40,000. The face of the 27 year-old was seriously swollen and her skin ulcerated. Dr Ly Hun Due said: "The hospital receives five to seven such cosmetics victims each week, and most have used black market cosmetics or creams of no known origin or products processed at home by individuals who are not trained." Ha Noi Dermatology and Venereology Hospital deputy director Nguyen Thi Thao said the number of patients allergic to cosmetics treated at her institution has increased since 2003-2004, and that cosmetic allergy occurs all year round, from the susceptibility of the user and poor quality products.
A Hanoi newspaper recently carried a report stating that Dong Thap Provincial police arrested a woman allegedly selling home-made whitening cream in the Chau Thanh District's Nha Man Market. An official stated: "We believe the home-made cream caused the death of Nguyen Ngoc Bich, 15, who died three days earlier after she is reported to have bought two boxes of Quynh Huong cream at the market and applied it to her entire body. After an hour, she had a temperature of 40°C and vomited. Admitted to the local Sa Dec General Hospital in critical condition, she died six hours later."
The hospital's emergency unit head, Dr Vu Kim Long said blood tests showed her white corpuscle count was six times higher than average, adding: "Apparently Quynh Huong was a home-made cream made at by an unlicensed workshop in Sa Dec, and analysis of the cream determined that it contained high levels of salicylic and benzoic acids, and caused the patients skin to shed and dehydration caused her body to overheat."
(VND 16,000 = $ 1.0)