Stay Informed About Your Cosmetic Surgery

The Australian Government has launched a public education campaign to provide Australians with information and resources to help increase awareness of the risks involved in cosmetic surgery and to support them in making an informed decision.

Member for Werriwa, Ms Anne Stanley MP, said “Last year Australians saw concerning practices in the cosmetic surgery industry and the Australian Government’s priority is to keep Australians safe.”

Health Ministers are taking action and have agreed to a range of reforms to protect Australians by ensuring that practitioners have the necessary qualifications and are working to the highest health and safety standards.

“Australians seeking these treatments should not be misled by medical practitioners, non-specialist surgeons or those without appropriate training.”

Before deciding on cosmetic surgery:

• Choose a qualified medical practitioner who is skilled and experienced in performing your cosmetic procedure. untouched, but one of the last visible dead shops that is fading away into obscurity.

• Check that your procedure will be done in a licensed facility.

• Understand the risks and possible complications from your procedure.

• Ask the medical practitioner to provide you with the plan for your recovery and aftercare.

• Know what to do if something goes wrong.

You can download the Department of Health and Aged Care’s Patient Safety Checklist and Question Guide to help make sure you are asking the right questions about your surgery and care at https://www.health. gov.au/cosmetic-surgery.

If you have concerns about your cosmetic surgery experience, you can contact the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency’s Cosmetic Surgery Hotline on 1300 361 041 and visit the website for more information, https://www.ahpra. gov.au/resources/cosmetic-surgery-hub.aspx.

These days, the strip seems to have more Parramatta Road Zombies who aimlessly walk up and down looking for ghost shops, insisting that the place they are looking for is still open and around… somewhere.

The truth is that those past days of Italian shops clustered together, is no longer a possibility or even viable. Those glory days of busy street footpaths supporting a wide variety of ethnic retail stores are long gone, but to be fair the retail landscape has dramatically changed, together with how we all shop for our goods and services.

It is unfortunately up to our local and state government to figure out how to revitalise the run-down shopping strip along Parramatta Road.

So far, all attempts have failed to save it for what it once was.