What’s being done to tackle skin-lightening in Nigeria?
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Skinlightening or bleaching is a multi-billion dollar industry. What is spoken about less these days is the harm some of these products can have both mentally and physically.

Nowadays, many women use these creams for cosmetic and cultural reasons. In fact, Nigerian women use skin whitening products more than any other African country. 77% of women use them there regularly. That's according to the World Health Organization. But what's being done to educate people about the risks? That's what we're getting into in today's episode. I'm Itka Farooq, and this is What's in the World from the BBC World Service. ♪

So let's find out a little bit more about these skin whitening products and how lots of women have been affected by them. I'm joined by the BBC's Medina Mishenu, who's in Abuja. Hey, Medina. Hi, Ikra. How are you? I'm not too bad. Medina, I know you've been doing lots of reporting on this and you have spoken to one mother, right, who's really experienced the harm of these skin whitening products. Yes, I spoke to a certain mother who's been

who is in her mid-30s. We named her Fatima, but that's not her real name. We just did that to protect her identity. So when I met Fatima in a northern state in Nigeria, she told me how she bleached six of her children and she told me why she did it. So what she told me is

She faced pressure from her family and discrimination, particularly her mother. Her mother does not show love to any of her children because her children wear dark skin. And she has a particular sister, and the sister married a light-skinned man. So her sister's children are light-skinned. So anytime they go to visit their grandmother, she and her sister, when they bring their kids to visit their grandmother, they notice that

The grandmother shows love to the light-skinned children. She doesn't show love to Fatima's children, which kind of broke her heart and it pushed her to make that terrible decision. And talking about the stigma, I can say that to date, she is still facing the stigma. She and her children are still facing the stigma because one of her daughters can't go out with her face open because she has discolored lips.

lips and people often mistaken her for a drug user you know um when you use drugs the smoke um the cigarettes the the chemicals or the things that people like drug users take it can affect the color on their lips so her daughter has very discolored lips and when people see her outside they start chanting oh this is a drug user this is a drug user

So due to that, her daughter can't go out with her face open. And her little baby, who is barely two years old, she also bleached him. And due to that bleaching, he has a certain skin condition, which means his skin barrier is weakened. And that is one of the side effects of using bleaching creams.

So when I met her son, I noticed that he had a lot of wounds on his body. So due to that, Fatima doesn't even like going out with him because he's prone to get scratches easily. And one little scratch can take him like a month or two to get healed. So I can say that they are still facing issues because of what Fatima did to her children. Just tell me a little bit more about the kinds of products she was using.

So Fatima was using creams that you could access at any random supermarket. These creams had different chemicals inside them like kojic acid, like hydroquinone, like mercury.

and different types of steroids that are dangerous to the skin and to a person's health if used in high quantity. So most of these creams she was using, they had double or triple of the approved dosage in them, which was quite harmful for adults not

even to talk about children. When I spoke to Nigeria's Food and Drug Agency regulator, NAFTAQ, they told me that these chemicals that I mentioned at the beginning, kojic acid, hydroquinone, there is an approved dosage. For example, for kojic acid, it is 1%. Kojic acid is not bad.

Kordic acid is something that you can use to treat hyperpigmentation, dermatitis and other skin conditions. But it's just the fact that people abuse these chemicals in the creams. They use a higher dosage. How easy is it to get a hold of these creams in Nigeria? It is very, very easy to get these creams in Nigeria. You can walk into any supermarket and find agaric.

adult bleaching creams, baby bleaching creams. You can even find the raw chemicals when you go to the market. Randomly, you can find them. Because when I went to Kano, where I did the story, I went to one of the markets where these creams are readily and easily available. So there's a whole row of shops in that market where I found that these people just use these chemicals and mix them, the raw chemicals. You can just walk in and tell them,

I want a certain percentage of this chemical mixed with this chemical mixed with this chemical to make me light skinned in, for example, let's say a week. So they are very available. Anywhere you go to, you can find them. And how does that compare to other countries in Africa? Is it similar situation, very widely available?

Well, when we talk about other countries, Nigeria is the top African country where people bleach their skin with about 77%.

Followed by Nigeria, there's Congo Brazzaville, there's Senegal, there's Ghana with about 60%, 50% and 30 something percent. These are just a few countries. So bleaching or skin lightening is something that is done widespreadly in places like Africa and not only Africa, in other countries, like in Asian countries too, in India too. So it's something that happens in many parts of the world, but particularly in Africa,

It's something that people do a lot. Medina, I know it's a big question, but why do women feel the need to use these creams? So the few women I came across when I was doing this piece, they showed me how usually they grew up understanding that light skin is being linked to wealth or to some sort of enjoyment in life.

or to beauty to beauty standards you know people think that when you're light-skinned

You have money, you have a good life, you are enjoying life. So that's why a lot of women and even men, they want to bleach their skins, they want to have that beautiful appearance. It's also, I think it's something that started, it's the whole societal pressure because the fact that people link these good things to light skinned women or men

It has become a thing of whenever someone wants to get married, if you bring someone that is dark skinned, your family might reject the person. So that's why a lot of people that are dark skinned, they'd rather use those creams, even though they know the harm that they might cause them, than face stigma in life.

Let's take a step back for a second and have a look at how skin lightening products actually work and a little bit of the science behind it all as well. We've got Zainab Bashir, who owns a dermatology clinic in Abuja in Nigeria on the line. Hey, Zainab. Hi, nice to meet you. Thanks for having me. So, Zainab, what is actually happening to the skin when these products are used?

So, just for the context of a layman, when you apply these bleaching products, it technically rips off the hydroleific layer of the skin, which is the protective layer of the skin.

In that sense, the skin gets easily susceptible to damages, to infection. And the bad part is some of these ingredients in the skin lightening products have travelers, so it can get absorbed into your bloodstream. So it's a very potent drug, which is the steroids that can get absorbed into your bloodstream and even affect other organs in your body. And what kind of ingredients are we talking about?

which are really harmful? So the most common that we find around steroids, potent steroids, globalis or propanoate, which is a very common one. Another very common ingredient is hydropinone.

which is used in extra outrageous amounts in these skin lightening products. Another hazardous ingredient, which is also very popular, is mercury. So these three ingredients combined actually cause a lot of problems and a lot of hazards on the skin and even in internal organs. And I wondered if we could touch on those side effects a little bit more. What sort of

side effects are you seeing in your clinic, in your research? What are the most severe ones? Yeah, so we've had like severe cases with patients who have used bleaching products for over a decade. Most of them start bleaching from a very young age, from teenage years, or some of them even from a younger toddler age that their mothers have been bleaching them. Some of the severe cases we've seen is a thinning of the skin.

in the sense that you can literally see the veins on the skin because of how thin it is. Another adverse effect with skin bleaching is exogenous acronysis. Now, exogenous acronysis is a

condition where the skin turns bluish black because of continuous usage of steroids or mercury over time. Now when that happens, it's more like a first degree burn. So the skin is completely damaged, sometimes almost irreversible, and it forms a thick layer on your skin that looks bluish.

So those are some of the severe cases, aside the now upcoming cases of melanoma and squamous cell carcinomas, which is a form of skin cancer. It's been so good to have you on. Thank you, Zainab. No problem. Thank you so much.

Medina, back to you now. What about when it comes to the Nigerian authorities? What are they doing to kind of raise awareness of the risks behind these skin lightening creams? So regarding the Nigerian authority, like I mentioned before, NAVDAC, the Nigerian Food and Drug Agency body or regulator, a few years ago they declared a state of emergency on bleaching creams, on the use of bleaching creams.

creams. So that kind of raised awareness in many parts of the country about the dangers of bleaching cream and how widespread the issue is. And apart from that, someone that I spoke to from that particular NAVTAC told me that they have been doing sensitization in different parts of the country. They go to the markets to inform the cream sellers or the mixologists, as they call themselves,

about the risks and the danger of what they are doing, of the practice they are actually doing. And they also organize workshops in various parts of the country to speak to mothers, to tell them the risks and to tell them why they should not go into bleaching their children and the kind of complications they can develop from bleaching their children and also from bleaching themselves.

So apart from that, also, they have been conducting various raids in many of the hotspots, the states with the highest bleaching cream usage like Kano and Lagos. They've been going to the markets, raiding these markets, and they have heightened the

security at the border points where these creams are being smuggled in from neighbouring countries. So that's what they've been doing. So bringing this back to Fatima's story, we shared it a little bit at the beginning, but how is she doing now? And what about the impact on her family from the effects of these creams as well?

So Fatima is presently doing OK. She's part of a group of women that goes to different rural areas to educate mothers and fathers too on the dangers of skin bleaching. And she goes there to share her experience so that they can learn from the mistakes that she made. They have changed. They have stopped using the creams.

And Fatima has resulted into using natural things like shea butter, coconut oil to fix their skin. And she told me that they're getting better now. Medina, thank you so much for coming on the podcast and for sharing Fatima's story as well. I know it's going to be an important one for so many women to hear. Thank you. Thank you so much for having me, Ikra. And thank you for joining us on this episode of What in the World from the BBC World Service. I'm Ikra Farooq and we'll see you next time. Bye. Bye.