Shivani BhakooLudhiana, December 13
Next time when you visit a slimming centre be sure that you are attended by a qualified doctor otherwise your life may be in danger. While most of the slimming centres offering various treatments for loosing weight claim that they have a qualified consulting doctor, the reality is that they have none and unqualified persons are given the task of attending to the client.
A survey of most of the slimming centres by Ludhiana Tribune revealed that there was no consulting doctors attending to the cleints but certain staff members were posing as doctors.
Interestingly, a local doctor who had visited one such centre on condition of anonymity told Ludhiana Tribune that he was shocked when he was taken to a ‘doctor’s’ room. The ‘doctor’ attending to the client at the centre posed a set of questions asking about many diseases like thyroid and diabetes etc. After the “interview”, when the client (the doctor) questioned the interviewer in a technical way, she admitted that she was not a doctor and was the slimming manager at the centre. But after remaining with the doctors for a long period, she had “learnt” a lot.
“While we are raising a lot of hue and cry against the quackery being practised in the sub-urban areas of the city and villages, no one really notices these people who are real quacks and are putting the lives of innocent people at risk. These elite people are flourishing the trade of quackery at a high speed by befooling the rich
people. Should they not be brought to the notice of courts?”, asked the doctor.
“Whereas small-time quacks are taken to task by the media as well as courts, the bigger ones go scot-free”, said Dr Rajesh Sharma, general secretary of the local unit of Indian Medical Association. He said: “The various slimming centers which claim to have a qualified doctors with them hardly have any. These centers, beauty parlours and even educated doctors do not lag behind in applying quackery for earning an easy buck. The rich and beauty-conscious people who can afford a huge amount for their looks and fall prey to the massive advertisements by the slimming centers”.
Dr Geeta Trehan, a surgeon at a local hospital, said that it was unfortunate officers and leaders were the chief guests on the opening ceremony of these centers. She added: “In a study conducted in USA, it was shown that by 2020 AD everybody will be obese. In an advanced country like USA where heart disease was the biggest cause of mortality caused by obesity, such techniques needed Food and Drug Authority (FDA) approval. But unfortunately, in developing countries like India no government organisation had bothered to check the menace unleashed by these advertisers”.
Almost all the slimming centers offer various kinds of laser treatments. They offer soft laser treatment for the treatment of wrinkles, scar tissue, pimples, falling hair, skin tags, warts and other skin infections.
Dr Satish Nauria, a skin specialist and president of the Ludhiana TB Eradication Society, said that laser treatment was one of the latest techniques being used extensively by various specialities of medical field right from Dentistry to Cardiology. He said: “In untrained hands it can cause havoc. In such a scenario only the fully-trained fresh medicos having taken extensive training can perform the procedure. Even the older lot of plastic surgeons and skin specialists without training in these latest equipment cannot operate them. The medically-illiterate owners of beauty parlours and slimming centers are making a fool of the public by giving advertisements to this effect. Some of these are even labelling themselves as the training centers.
Meanwhile, the Civil Surgeon, Dr Rajinder Kaur, maintained that these slimming centers did not take the permission of the Health Department. She said that the department was also not given any kind of instructions to keep a vigil on them on this issue.
