Accused of botched ops & promoting themselves at UK event

SEVERAL Turkish health firms accused of carrying out botched cosmetic surgery on British patients have been openly plugging their deals in the UK.

- MATTHEW YOUNG and AMY SHARPE

Melissa Kerr, 31, died on the day she had Brazilian Butt Lift surgery at the private Medicana Kadikoy Hospital in Istanbul in 2019.

But health giant Medicana - which runs that hospital and has recently launched a clinic in Britain - was one of dozens of Turkish companies at a huge cosmetic health conference in the capital on February 14.

Despite Melissa's death, one of its staff later told us it had a "100% success rate".

Two of our reporters - one male, one female - went undercover at the fair to find out exactly how potential patients were having their surgery cosmetic dreams sold to them.

After Melissa, from Denton, Norfolk, died a coroner raised concerns that she and others were not given enough information to help them make safe decisions before they went abroad to go under the knife.

She is one of at least 28 British people to have died as a result of cosmetic procedures carried out in Turkey since 2019.

Another was Morgan Ribeiro, who died in January last year after having gastric sleeve surgery in Istanbul.

The 20-year-old, from Croydon, went into septic shock on her flight back to the UK and the plane had to divert to Belgrade. Morgan died in a hospital in the Serbian capital days later.

Despite the tragedies, the UK market for private Turkish clinics is still strong.

Our investigators talked to Medicana representatives at length about possible cosmetic surgeries. They were assured that, thanks to the company's new UK clinic in Winchester, Hants, any potential issues could be corrected on home soil while avoiding the NHS.