The Saudi Food and Drug Authority (SFDA) has reached an agreement to ensure that all women with faulty breast implants from the now-defunct French firm, Poly Implant Prothese (PIP), will be able to have them removed and replaced free-of-charge. In a media statement Tuesday to the Saudi Press Agency (SPA), the SFDA said it concluded the agreement with the local medical supply company that had imported the silicone implants and plastic surgeons who had conducted the initial operations. The statement said this covers all the implants which entered the country from 2006 to 2009 through express mail companies. The SFDA said its inspectors had visited all local hospitals where the faulty implants were used. Dr. Saleh Bin Hussein Al-Tayar, Deputy Executive President of the SFDA for Devices and Medical Products, said the agency has set up a call center to register the names of the affected women, the hospitals and medical centers where the operations took place, types of silicone used and names of the plastic surgeons. He said women with faulty implants can contact the authority via email on [email protected] or on the toll free telephone numbers 01-4709340 and 0515170895 or fax 01-2757246. A total of 300,000 women around the world bought the implants which ruptured easily and contained toxic industrial silicone. The French company was shut down in 2010.
