I was talking to a girl in Barbishe a few years ago and I saw that the skin of her face was not healthy with lot of pores and pigmentation.

I asked her what was the reason and the young girl of 16 said, ”I had used a whitening cream a few weeks ago and it looked very good on me. I was white like snow and very happy. But after two weeks my skin started to get itchy and now I am very sad.

I have stopped using it. Will my skin patch disappear? Is there any doctor where I can go and get medicine to get rid of it?”

She seemed very depressed and I could feel her pain as when I was an adolescent I used to use many types of creams to get rid of my pimples and blackhead of my face as I wanted to be fair as I thought I would be praised by everybody if I looked (Goro) white.

My mother used to tell me to eat healthy food and clean the face with water only but I never listened to her and only after many years I was able to understand the value of her knowledge.

My mother used to tell me that using creams my skin would get worse but I believed more the beautiful ads than my mother and suffered. My mother was not educated so I did not pay heed. But learning from her later on I told my daughters so.

I told my daughters in their childhood that there was no point to look “white” but one should be healthy and the face will be radiant. One should eat healthy food and discard junk foods to get a clean face, and there is no need to use various types of cosmetic.

But not all parents feel like I had felt and they pressurized their children specially to look ”white” and use any cream for that purpose.

Very few of us know that most creams sold in the market are a dangerous cocktail of compounds like steroids, hydroquinone, and tretinoin, the long term use of which can lead to lethal health concerns like permanent pigmentation, skin cancer, liver damage, mercury poisoning and others.

It seems that this large industry does not pay attention to the health of the people and health workers also do not speak against those cosmetics as they are “too busy“.

As many public health specialists, heart specialists are now talking openly pointing out the health hazards of junk food, sugar, cold drink and making people aware about using healthy home made food instead of those junk items, why cannot skin specialists come forward and speak against the ‘fairness cream “ which has both long term and short term impact.