Skin whitening in Africa is a novel that has become fashionable, there are several cases of people in the Nigerian region who mix products with the aim of achieving a white color.
According to the doctor, Isina Sobande was in medical school when she first heard about mothers bleaching their babies’ skin.
Skin whitening is popular in many parts of the world, including South Asia and the Middle East.
But medical experts say Africa is a continent where regulations are often lax or disregarded. The growing phenomenon is fraught with health risks.
At a health center in Lagos, a mother brought in a two-month-old child who was crying in pain.
“He had very large wounds all over his body,” said the 27-year-old Nigerian in a calm conversation with AFP. “It seemed like they weren’t normal.”
Shocked, the young doctor now has a different view on skin lightening, also called bleaching or bleaching.
For many Nigerians, it is “standard procedure,” a gateway to beauty and success, she said.
“It’s a mentality that has eaten into society. For many people, it’s the way to get a good job, to have a relationship.”
Africa is experiencing a “massive trend of increased use (of skin lightening), particularly in teenagers and young adults,” said Lester Davids, professor of physiology at the University of Pretoria in South Africa.
“The older generation used creams – the new generation uses tablets and injectables. The horror is that we don’t know what these things do in high concentrations over time in the body.”
Where statistics exist about the skin bleaching industry in Africa, they are often old or unreliable.
But evidence from the range of products, suppliers and services points to a continent-wide market that could be tens of millions of people and possibly more.
In Nigeria alone, 77 percent of women – by extrapolation, more than 60 million people – are using whitening products “regularly,” the World Health Organization (WHO) said in 2011.
Cremes Bootleg
Experts say the African market is expanding rapidly as companies seek to profit from the continent’s growing young population.
“More customers want insights into the lighting market,” said Rubab Abdoolla, beauty analyst at Euromonitor International.
The rich tend to opt for more expensive registered products that are available in standard doses.
Others are prone to buying creams, often mixed together on back streets, which can be dangerous and are sold brazenly in defiance of official bans or restrictions.
The ingredients may include hydroquinone, steroids, mercury and lead – the same element that, in high doses, poisoned Elizabethan courtiers who powdered their faces ivory white.
“These chemicals harm the respiratory, renal and reproductive systems,” warned an official from Nigeria’s drug control agency. “They cause cancer, affect the nervous system, deform unborn babies.”
Despite the risks, authorities are struggling to control bleaching innovations, which include a compound called glutathione, taken as injections or pills.
Nigeria, South Africa and Kenya have banned skin-bleaching products with high amounts of hydroquinone and mercury, with South Africa’s KwaZulu-Natal province urging people to “reject all colonial notions of beauty.”
In July, the Ghana Food and Drug Authority issued a statement telling pregnant women not to take glutathione pills to whiten their babies, saying there could be “serious toxic side effects” such as “asthma, kidney failure and chest pain.” .
The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) stresses that it has not given approval to any of the injections on the market today.
“These products are potentially unsafe and ineffective, and may contain harmful ingredients or unknown contaminants.”