Public Health Minister Sabino Baez promised that his department, “even if it is for the first time,” would take issue with the death of Maria de los Angeles, who died following a surgical procedure on 1 November, as reported in El Caribe newspaper. He said that the National Bioethics Commission, presided over by lawyer and former judge of the Central Electoral Board (JCE) Aura Celeste Fernandez and gynecologist Miguel Montalvo, would present a report on the case.
Meanwhile, the Dominican College of Medicine (CMD) and the Dominican Society of Plastic Surgeons demanded an exhaustive investigation on Morel’s death, which occurred following a liposuction operation at the Centro Medico Bellas Artes in Santo Domingo. The president of the CMD, Waldo Ariel Suero, wants the case to be taken to the judiciary. For this to happen, however, the relatives need to press official charges.
Julio Pena Encarnacion, the president of the Dominican Society of Plastic Surgeons, said that Dr Edgar Contreras, the physician who operated on Morel, has never been a member of that organization. He said that at the end of the 90s, Contreras requested to be admitted, but was denied because he did not meet the requirements. “He did not meet them back then, much less now,” he said.
Contreras, for his part, defended his practice by saying he had been operating for 15 years and has a track record of over 2,000 successful operations.
The newspaper presents several cases in which those seeking a body fix have met with fatal consequences. These include Rosanna Altagracia Pena from New Jersey, who was operated on by Edgar Contreras’s brother, Juan Francisco Contreras, on 21 June 1998; Dhelmalyz Rivera of Puerto Rico, who died 15 August 1998 following a surgical procedure at the hands of Edgar Contreras; and Isabel Vargas, a Dominican living in Puerto Rico, who also died following an operation by Edgar Contreras in April 1999. The newspaper mentions four other lost lives due to plastic surgery in the DR, but does not mention the physicians’ names.