A New Mexico salon that gave 'vampire facials' has been linked to new HIV cases.
As women and men all over the world are hoping to get clearer and more youthful skin, sometimes going to the weird side is necessary for the final results.
But what wasn’t expected was that a simple facial would result in life changing consequences due to bad practices of a spa owner.
After an Albuquerque spa shut its doors in 2018, the last thing that was suspected was a spread of a deadly infection due to their services.
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Though that’s exactly what happened when VIP Beauty Salon and Spa was initially shut down after a multi-state agency identified practices that could "potentially spread blood-borne infections, such as HIV, hepatitis B, and hepatitis C to clients."
The salon supplied a beauty treatment known as a 'vampire facial' - which is supposed to be an advanced skincare procedure that uses your own blood to improve wrinkles, lighten skin pigmentation and reduce the appearance of scars.
It involves drawing blood from a patient’s arm, before placing it into a machine which separates the platelets from the rest of the blood before re-injecting into the face.
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Though clients are injected with their own blood, somehow, they were being infected with the HIV virus shortly after visiting VIP Spa.
This led to questions over how the practice was performing the facials, whether they were reusing needles, or if another patient’s blood was used to perform the facial.
After a lengthy investigation into the spa by The New Mexico Department of Health, the owner was found to have been practicing medicine without a licence and plead guilty to five felony counts in 2022.
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But the chain reaction of the dodgy spa wasn’t over as now, another case has been linked to the vampire facials.
According to The Department of Health, their infectious disease bureau received a report this year about a "newly diagnosed case of HIV whose only self-reported HIV risk exposure was a vampire facial received at VIP Spa in Albuquerque, N.M. in 2018."
They said during a press release on Wednesday that said it has re-opened its investigation and is urging those who received injection-related services to be tested for HIV, hepatitis B and hepatitis C.
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Although the health department provided testing to more than 100 spa clients earlier in their investigation, they recommended that former clients of the VIP spa should be retested even if they previously tested negative for the disease.
Dr Laura Parajon, Department of Health deputy secretary, said in a news release: “It’s very important that we spread the word and remind people who received any kind of injection-related to services provided at the VIP Spa to come in for free and confidential testing.”
As of now, the current rate of additional HIV infections caused by the direct or indirect services of the disgraced spa is undisclosed.
Britt Jones