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A Black girl who reportedly traveled to Mexico to obtain a tummy tuck was kidnapped with three different individuals in an assault that consultants say highlights the dangers of going overseas for extra inexpensive medical care.
The U.S. Embassy in Mexico stated in a press release that “unknown assailants” kidnapped the 4 Individuals at gunpoint “in an incident wherein an harmless Mexican citizen was tragically killed.” Two of the 4 Individuals have been additionally killed within the March 3 assault and one was injured, the Justice Division stated. The 2 survivors returned to the U.S., the place they acquired medical remedy.
The group had traveled to Matamoros, which is situated in Tamaulipas, the Mexican state that the usState Division advises Individuals to keep away from as a consequence of crime.
“I do know girls who’ve gone to Matamoros to have their cosmetic surgery finished. Then they go to the seaside to get better, after which they get up lifeless the subsequent day,” Dr. Filiberto Rodriguez, a plastic surgeon in Edinburgh, Texas, simply miles from the border with Mexico, informed Yahoo Information. “This isn’t a trip place. The drug battle is actual. There’s violence within the streets routinely.”
Nationwide Guard and navy automobiles participate in an operation to switch two of the 4 U.Ss residents kidnapped in Mexico’s crime-ridden northeast again to Brownsville, Texas, after the opposite two have been discovered lifeless, in Matamoros, Mexico, on March 7. (STR/AFP by way of Getty Photographs)
The variety of Individuals taking part in medical tourism has risen in recent times. In 2007, the American Journal of Medication discovered that 750,000 Individuals did so. By 2017, that quantity had hit 1.4 million. Mexico is among the many high locations for medical vacationers, in accordance with Sufferers With out Borders, a consulting firm that gives data on the medical tourism business.
It’s not unusual for individuals to journey overseas for medical procedures, however the observe might be dangerous. In accordance with the Facilities for Illness and Management and Prevention, there are a number of components — and potential problems — that sufferers ought to take into account, together with continuity and high quality of care, air journey, antibiotic resistance, infectious illness and communication challenges.
“You may have individuals from San Francisco going all the way in which right down to Tijuana. Individuals all the way in which from Colorado going into northern Mexico. Individuals from the East Coast flying to the Dominican Republic. They usually take lots of dangers,” Rodriguez stated.
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In 2013, the American Society of Plastic Surgeons discovered that 8% of all cosmetic surgery was finished on Black sufferers, which equaled greater than 1.2 million beauty procedures. For Black sufferers, beauty surgical procedure procedures elevated from 768,512 in 2015 to 1.7 million in 2020, in accordance with the American Society of Aesthetic Plastic Surgical procedure.
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Whereas knowledge is scarce on the mortality charges of Individuals touring abroad for beauty procedures, there have been quite a lot of information reviews in recent times of Black sufferers, significantly girls, dying because of problems from the surgical procedures.
“We aren’t having sufficient conversations in regards to the affect cosmetic surgery is having on Black girls,” Dr. Religion Crittenden, a resident doctor at Yale-New Haven Kids’s Hospital, stated on Twitter. “Although BBLs aren’t favorable operations within the US. That’s not stopping our sufferers from touring for them,” she stated, referring to the Brazilian butt-lift process.
“What occurred in Mexico is barely the tip of the iceberg of this drawback with cosmetic surgery tradition and its affect on Black girls,” Crittenden added. “It’s time to speak about it. It’s time to care. We in medication are doing a disservice by ignoring this rising drawback, by not offering the correct training to our sufferers and letting them know the risks and harms.”
In Might 2022, Shacare Terry of Indiana misplaced her life after touring to Mexico and the Dominican Republic for weight-loss surgical procedures. That following December, Sucretta Tolliver, a mom in Chicago, died after a beauty surgical procedure within the Dominican Republic.
From left: Shacare Terry, Sucretta Tolliver, Keuana Weaver, Markita McIntyre and Alicia Williams. (Fb)
In January 2021, Keuana Weaver, a 38-year-old California girl, died duriing cosmetic surgery in Tijuana. And in Might of that 12 months, 34-year-old Markita McIntyre, a mom of three from Biloxi, Miss., died whereas getting gastrectomy surgical procedure in Tijuana. Alicia Williams, an Alabama instructor, died in 2019 from problems after beauty surgical procedure within the Dominican Republic.
“Each week now we have [a] dying [in] the ER from botched surgical procedures finished in Mexico,” Rodriguez stated. “As soon as you’ve got gone in a foreign country, you actually haven’t any recourse in any way. After which for those who die, you die.”
In 2021, Renee Donaldson, a Black social media influencer, apologized for selling Clinichub, an organization that organized beauty surgical procedures with a Turkish firm, after British girls who acquired surgical procedures there skilled critical problems.
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Consultants discovered that the value distinction is without doubt one of the important causes Individuals take part in medical tourism. “When you’re taking a look at money costs, the apples-to-apples comparability, you are taking a look at a few 40% to 60% lower in going internationally for a similar process,” David Vequist, founding father of the Middle for Medical Tourism analysis, informed Yahoo Information.
However some docs query if the value is definitely worth the threat. “It is actual surgical procedure, chopping into individuals, dissecting, chopping off pores and skin, sucking up fats; it is surgical procedure,” Rodriguez stated.
Because the medical tourism business continues to develop, Vequist estimates that greater than $264 million will probably be spent on it in Mexico this 12 months alone.
“I feel individuals have to take beauty surgical procedures severely and notice that their physique shouldn’t be an experiment,” Rodriguez stated. “You solely get one physique.”