The Beauty Industry has not taken root as professional areas in many African countries, including Rwanda despite contributing significantly to their revenue streams and employment creation. Beauty Industry other than being a big revenue and employment creator is an activity involving intimate body manipulations which should raise utmost public health concerns in case health and safety measures are not taken to streamline services provided by beauty salons.

Unsafe or unhygienic practices in the beauty treatment industry can lead to the spread of infectious diseases that can affect the health of the client as well as jeopardise the health of the operator. Illnesses such as hepatitis B, hepatitis C and HIV/AIDS can spread by blood-to-blood contact, so it is essential for staff to understand the precautions required for any procedure that may involve skin penetration and possible blood contamination.

Another major concern is that the Beauty industry is a major consumer of cosmetic products from around the world. Many of these cosmetic products have subscribed to the colourism ideology of the superiority of the whitened skin and are encouraging the utmost dangerous practices of skin bleaching among people of coloured skin leading to health complications and disease burdens to their communities and countries.

The body of research in this subject clearly calls for regulation supported by objective standards and conformity assessment regimes. Beauty makers therefore need to be informed on requirements for the provision of quality beauty salon services in order to stimulate informed cosmetic product consumption as well as to facilitate building of professionals who can trade safe and healthy beauty treatment services while improving business activity in the beauty industry in the country.

In this respect, Rwanda Standards Board has organized a workshop that will bring together beauty making operators to raise awareness and collect feedback from a wide audience of beauty salon operators on the requirements for the provision of quality beauty salon services as prescribed in the Committee Draft Standard on Beauty salon services-Requirements in order to promote health and safety in the beauty making industry.

The workshop will take place at Rwanda Standards Board Headquartrs, Metrology Conference room, on 18th May 2017, starting at 8:00 am.