Elizabeth Kobiti mixes a skin lightening cream in her beauty salon in Lagos. Africa is experiencing a massive trend of skin bleaching, also called lightening or whitening, particularly in teenagers and young adults. In Nigeria, 77 per cent of women (more than 60 million people) are using lightening products on a "regular basis", the World Health Organization (WHO) said in 2011. The skin lightening industry has globally grown into a billion dollar industry yet in some places like Africa the practice is still seen as highly controversial, largely unregulated and littered with misconceptions. Photo: AFP
Dr. Isima Sobande was in medical school when she first heard of mothers who bleached the skin of their babies. She dismissed it as an urban myth. But it wasn’t long before she saw it with…
Read More…..Guardian Newspapers
