A few days after a woman died at the unlicensed Cat Tuong beauty salon and her body was thrown into the Hong River in Hanoi by the salon's owner, many similar facilities have been found operating in the capital, a Tuoi Tre survey has found.

At beauty salon K on Quang Trung Street, abdominal liposuction, breast lift surgery, and buttock enhancement services are offered to customers, although such services are not allowed to be performed in a private health facility.

These services are advertised as “absolutely safe” and claim to leave no scars.

This salon is among a few beauty facilities that still publicly advertise unlicensed beauty services. An employee there told Tuoi Tre that all services were conducted regularly.

However, the employee said, for complex services such as abdominal liposuction or breast lift surgery, customers are first required to have a physical examination at a private hospital that is associated with the salon.

In case customers have health problems such as heart diseases or hypertension, the salon will refuse to perform surgeries on them, the employee said reservedly.

The employee also said the salon is associated with a hospital in South Korea, so customers can use services offered from that hospital if they want, but, of course, they will have to pay three times more than they would at the salon.   The cost for a breast lift surgery using fat taken from the patient is US$8,000 if performed by a South Korean doctor but only $3,000 if performed by a Vietnamese surgeon, the employee said.       Similarly, the Medicine Aesthetic Institute advertises that it offers breast lift services in which the patient’s fat tissue is used in the surgery.

Another salon, H.M. on Xa Dan Street, boasts a technique in which fat is removed from customers’ abdomen or thighs and is then implanted into their breasts to lift and enlarge them in a safe way that does not require surgery and causes no pain.

The same operations are available in many other beauty salons in the capital.

Difficult to control falses advertisements

At a media meeting on Wednesday, Chief inspector of the Hanoi Health Department Nguyen Viet Cuong said that it is very difficult to control advertisements by beauty salons.

Hanoi has licensed 35 beauty salons so that they can offer such services as double eyelid surgery, nose lifts, and face lifts.

Meanwhile, there are many facilities operating without a license that advertise on websites, personal blogs, and social networks. Such advertisements are boastful, untrue, and illegal, but are hard to prevent, Cuong said.

In order to crack down on illegal beauty salons or salons that offer unlicensed services, since May 2013, the department has issued two documents asking all districts to tighten control over all private providers of beauty services and to detect and punish any violators of applicable regulations.

During the first nine months of this year, the department has inspected and suspended 11 private clinics that operated without a license, the chief inspector said.

However, a health specialist told Tuoi Tre that Cat Tuong has operated illegally since May 2013, but local heath authorities had failed to detect it until the death of the 37-year-old woman.

Such management and control is irresponsible, the specialist said.