(MENAFN - Jordan Times) The Jordan Food and Drug Administration (JFDA) on Wednesday called on Jordanian women with silicone breast implants manufactured by the French company Poly Implant Prostheses (PIP) to have them removed.
"Women who have had silicone breast implants for medical or cosmetic purposes should check with their doctors about the manufacturing company. If they were manufactured by the French company PIP, they are urged to remove them," the JFDA said in a statement sent to The Jordan Times.
According to JFDA Director General Mohammad Rawabdeh, concerns emerged after receiving reports that the French implants contain industrial silicone rather than medical-grade fillers and that they may be more prone to leakage.
He told The Jordan Times that although the Kingdom does not officially import the type of silicone in question, "sometimes doctors ask their patients to bring it from abroad or doctors themselves might bring it individually".
"We have not received any complaints so far," Rawabdeh noted.
On December 23, France's health ministry advised 30,000 women in the country with implants made by PIP to have them removed after the firm was found to have been using industrial-grade silicone gel in its implants, Agence France-Presse reported.
The use of industrial-grade silicone gel caused abnormally high rupture rates, but the authorities have said there was no proven cancer risk.
More than 400,000 women in over 65 countries have received breast implants made by the company whose founder, Jean-Claude Mas, was charged last month in France with causing "involuntary injuries", AFP reported.
French authorities have been criticised for being slow to react to a case that has sown fear among tens of thousands of women who carry PIP implants, according to Reuters.
French inspectors ordered them off the market in March 2010, due to concerns over their quality, but only in December did officials in Paris recommended their surgical removal, drawing attention to the problem for patients worldwide who had been fitted with products from the company, which was at one time the third largest global supplier, the agency reported.
