Botox 'left Northumberland woman unable to open eye for 16 weeks'

A woman has warned about getting Botox injections from non-medical practitioners after she allegedly could not open her eye for 16 weeks.

Amy from Northumberland saw an advert on social media from a "clinic" offering the procedure, but when she arrived it was a residential property.

Within a couple of days she said she noticed her eye starting to droop and five days after the injection she could not move her eye lid.

She has called for a licensing scheme.

As the law stands, cosmetic practitioners do not have to have any mandatory qualifications, even though some treatments involve needles and can cause serious complications.

The Department of Health is looking at introducing a licensing scheme for practitioners in England carrying out non-surgical cosmetic procedures but a timescale has not been outlined.

Amy, 36, said alarm bells started to ring when she arrived at the address in December and discovered the procedure would be carried out in a "poorly-lit living room".

"On her advertisement there is the words clinic and nurse, so I thought 'great she is a professional' and then I arrived at the address and it wasn't a clinic, it was the lady's home address.

"I had been told by someone else that it [the procedure] would feel like a little bee sting and it wasn't , it was actually very painful.

"I could feel the needle twisting under the skin and felt it ping and scratch against the surface of the skin when she was taking it out."

Afterwards to address the problem with her eye, Amy sought help from a different cosmetic practitioner who prescribed drops "to tighten the muscles around the eye, and help open it", but she said it took 16 weeks for the initial dose to wear off.

She said she realised the woman who carried out the procedure "wasn't actually a nurse" when she allegedly refused to provide details about the batch number of the Botox, who had prescribed it and where she had completed her training.

"Trust your instincts and think if it's offered for a discounted price - where is it from? Whether it is legal? And why is it so cheap? I would advise anyone to really do their homework and make sure you know the side-effects and consequences," she said.

"It's not like going out and getting your eyebrows tinted and waxed, it is someone putting a potentially dangerous poison in your face.

"I should have just walked away."

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