BRAZIL: Brazil to pay for replacement of faulty breast implants.

Record ID: 796124

  • Title: BRAZIL: Brazil to pay for replacement of faulty breast implants.
  • Date: 13th January 2012
  • Summary: VARIOUS OF BERRETTA
  • Embargoed: 28th January 2012 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Brazil, Brazil
  • Country: Brazil
  • Topics: Health
  • Reuters ID: LVA30WEPPWTD80DQS5BGNT60DC6N
  • Story Text: Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff ordered on Wednesday (January 11) the country's public health system and health insurance companies pay for the replacement of ruptured breast implants made in France, even if they were done for aesthetic reasons.
    Fears over the safety of the breast implants made by now defunct French company PIP spread around the world in December on reports they were made with industrial rather than medical grade silicone and had abnormally high rupture rates.
    Director of the National Surveillance Agency, Dirceu Barbano, defended Brazil's initial approval of the implants, saying that the prostheses were changed after Brazil had already approved them.
    "The prostheses were registered here with a determined silicone. Then, they were produced with another kind of silicone. And the ones implanted were not the ones used on the register," he said.
    Brazil's health system will monitor all women with the implants to catch any signs of rupture, Anvisa said on its website.
    President of the consumer's protection institute (PROCON), Oswaldo Moraes, said that the company needs to take responsibility.
    "The company that offers a bad service must change the product or return the money used by the consumer," said Moraes.
    More than 25,000 of the French-made implants were used in Brazil - a country that places high value on appearance and has a huge cosmetic surgery industry.
    One of the Brazilian victims of the faulty implants said she'd never considered the possibility of ruptures.
    "At the time that you decide to do the surgery you don't think about the health issues, you worry about the aesthetics," she said.
    According to the International Society of Aesthetic Plastic Surgery, five Latin American countries -- Brazil, Mexico, Colombia, Venezuela and Argentina -- rank among the top 20 nations where most surgical procedures were carried out last year.
  • Copyright Holder: REUTERS
  • Copyright Notice: (c) Copyright Thomson Reuters 2012. Open For Restrictions - http://about.reuters.com/fulllegal.asp
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