Celebrities must stop bleaching - Prof. Delle

Professor Edmund Delle, the dermatologist-founder of Rabito Clinic, has appealed to celebrities to desist from skin bleaching.

He said celebrities were seen as role models, therefore, any behavior that they endorsed was likely to be emulated by their followers, especially the youth.

Prof Delle, who is also the Medical Director of the Clinic, gave the advice on Friday during a free health screening exercise for persons with skin diseases in Accra, as part of the clinic’s 40th Anniversary.

He urged people to consider their skins as valuable assets and treat them with all the needed attention they deserved to avoid skin diseases, which could also affect other organs of their bodies.

Skin bleaching, experts say, comes with hazardous health consequences. The dangers resulting from the use of toxic compounds for skin bleaching include blood cancers such as leukemia and cancers of the liver and kidneys. Severe skin conditions can also care.

Some bleachers use illegal ointments containing toxins like mercury, a metal that blocks the production of melanin, which gives the skin its colour, but it can also be toxic.

Prof Delle appealed to people to report signs of skin diseases for early treatment to prevent complications and longer periods of treatment.

He called on women to be very careful when they visited beauty salons since it had been detected that some of the sharp objects they used on their hairs and nails could aid the transfer of diseases.

Angela Neku, a woman with a fungal nail infection, expressed her appreciation to Prof Delle for his willingness to treat her as she had visited a lot of hospitals without receiving the needed cure for her nails.