We’ve never been comfortable with the fact that beauty therapists, that aren’t medically trained, can administer injectable dermal fillers in unlicensed beauty salons. Although there is no UK law that prohibits such activity, our campaign maintains that a more stringent and regulated industry should over see the suitability of such practitioners entering the aesthetic industry and carrying out such popular invasive and risky procedures.
Our stance has always been the endorsement of rigorous training, qualifications, experience, skill and compliance.
So last week our campaign was delighted when several industry news sources announced the news that as of 26th May 2020, The MHRA would enforce all collagen and hyaluronic acid injectables and related products to be available by prescription only (prescription only device POD). This would have meant that only a medically trained professional could write out a prescription and supply a dermal filler, so beauty salons offering the treatments will need to be overseen by a doctor or prescribing nurse
On the back of these news articles, The Safety in Beauty Campaign announced during the last week of January 2018 on social media, the breaking and emerging news. Our social media posts went viral receiving an audience on Facebook alone of over 70,000 views and 227 shares of the post, Twitter analytics also revealed an outreach of over 150,00 more people seeing this welcome news piece.
Several days later, it emerged from the MHRA directly, that this news was not indeed factual, and that no concrete plans had been finalised for dermal fillers to be made prescription only devices. Sadly, the retraction of the news stories from several industry news sources, have meant that we have had to also take down our posts and issue this statement of clarity. Naturally, our campaign, along with thousands of industry professionals fighting in unity for a safer industry are disappointed to learn of this development.
Currently in the UK, dermal fillers can be registered as a medical device, medicinal product or cosmetic. We remain hopeful that under a new Medical Device Regulation law, all dermal fillers would need to be registered as a class III medical device and will be subject to strict safety regulations. Class III is the highest class of risk, that covers products that are absorbed by the body, such as collagen.
This would be huge step forward for safety in beauty and for public wellbeing and would indeed be celebrated. For more information see this helpful GOV.UK interactive guide.
We will keep our community informed of developments and thank all our supporters for being so united and supportive in such topics and movements.