Mr Isaac Jakalia, the Upper West Regional Regulatory Officer of Food and Drugs Authority (FDA), has advised students to stop bleaching their skins and abusing tramadol to prevent skin and mental related diseases or disorders.

He warned students against lightening, brightening and whitening their skins as well as abusing tramadol, alcohol and smoking as the practice has the devastating consequences of causing chronic diseases and eventually leading to death.

Mr Jakalia was addressing students of Wa Senior High Technical School during a sensitisation campaign against skin bleaching organized by Stop Bleaching Foundation Ghana, a local nongovernmental, in collaboration with the FDA.

He said some bleaching creams contained harmful chemical elements such as mercury, hydroquinone, niacinamide, topical retinoid, and steroid among several others that were very harmful to the body.

Skin cancer, skin injuries, damage to internal organs, infections and other dangers associated with the use of skin bleaching products were extensively discussed at the gathering as part of the crusade to enlighten students on the negative effects of bleaching their skins and drug abuse.

Some of the reasons motivating people to bleach their skins included desire to look beautiful and attract men, low self-esteem, peer group influence, ignorance among others.

Aside from the skin bleaching, students were advised to stop smoking and using tramadol as tools to boost their studies since they posed grave health implications.

“You can lose your brain either through smoking or tramadol abuse and that would affect your academic work,” Mr Jakalia stated Tramadol has been vetted and approved by the FDA as a pain killer with the one containing 50 milligrams or 100 milligrams in capsules and tablets.

The injection contains 50 milligrams and a doctor can prescribe one or two injections to a patient depending on the pains.

Mr Albert Ankomah, the Upper West Regional Head of FDA said the authority seized a total of 42 contaminated products from the market last year but some producers of cosmetics dragged the FDA to court.

He said FDA would continue to engage the public through sensitization programmes against the use of harmful cosmetics in the local markets.

According to him, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of FDA, Mrs Delese A.A.A Darko, has issued a directive to regional branches of FDA to carry out a sensitization campaign against the use of bleaching cosmetics while they await court ruling on ban on bleaching products.

The purpose of “stop bleaching” campaign was to educate the public especially students from second cycle institutions about the dangers associated with skin bleaching and tramadol abuse.

The campaign also aims to discourage youth from using harmful products.