20 December 2011 - 14H24  

France 'to order 30,000 women to remove implants'
An undated photo of Edwige Ligoneche, who had surgery to insert breast implants supplied by Poly Implant Prothèse (PIP) and who died aged 53 on November 21, 2011 in a Marseille cancer clinic. Her family have launched a manslaughter case against the company as they suspect liquids that leaked from her implants caused her death.
An undated photo of Edwige Ligoneche, who had surgery to insert breast implants supplied by Poly Implant Prothèse (PIP) and who died aged 53 on November 21, 2011 in a Marseille cancer clinic. Her family have launched a manslaughter case against the company as they suspect liquids that leaked from her implants caused her death.

AFP - French medical authorities will this week tell 30,000 women who received defective breast implants to have them removed after several suspicious cases of cancer, daily Liberation reported Tuesday.

Quoting senior medical officials, the newspaper said that before the end of the week authorities will ask all women who received implants supplied by the Poly Implant Prothèse (PIP) company to have them removed.

PIP was shut down and its product banned last year after it was revealed to have been using non-authorised silicone gel that caused abnormally high rupture rates of its implants.

Health officials said last week that eight cases of cancer, mainly breast cancer, had been reported in women who had received the PIP implants.

"It is urgent for all women who have PIP implants to return to see their surgeons," French government spokeswoman Valerie Pecresse told Liberation.

Police have received 2,000 complaints from women who received the implants and have opened a criminal investigation into the firm.

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