The whitening creams are increasingly popular in Africa, Asia and the Middle East, despite evidence of its health dangers.
Ivory Coast banned skin-whitening creams over potential health risks for women using them – many in West Africa – as they believe a white skin make them look more attractive. The sale of any creams containing mercury and its derivatives, cortisone, vitamin A or more than two percent Hydroquinone, a lightening agent that is used to develop photographs, is now prohibited for sale, informed the country’s ministry of Health.
“The number of people with side effects caused by these medicines is really high,” Christian Doudouko, a member of Ivory Coast’s pharmaceutical authority, told the French news agency AFP. He warned that they could cause skin cancer. While many billboards advertise all across the continent, the benefits of skin-whitening creams, based on a Western ideal of beauty, is now also widely used by men.
They are also extremely popular in the Middle East and in Asian countries, such as Japan, India and Pakistan. This success is partly explainable by the history of slave trade in these countries, where a culture hyper sexualizing Black women is still deeply rooted in mentalities.
