Chinese-sourced dried human placenta is being widely sold at traditional medicine stores in HCM City, posing a great risk to human health concern as experts say they are highly prone to carrying bacteria.

 Shop offering placenta

Panacea sellers

Dried placenta is considered a popular medicine in Vietnam and China, with 100 grams of sold for VND400,000 (USD19.2).

An owner of a medicine store in Hai Thuong Lan Ong Street said, "Dried placenta is very much in demand these days. Sometimes customers have to pre-order it a week in advance." The placenta mainly comes from China. "We rarely get any from hospitals in HCM City. The fresh placenta is pricer because it obviously doesn’t contain preservatives." he said.

Dried placenta can be found at any traditional medicine store. A bag of placenta processed in Vietnam is sold at VND205-250,000 (USD10-12). A shop owner in Hai Ba Trung Street affirmed that locally produced placenta is really safe, as it has been dried at high temperature then ground up.

The placenta imported from China costs over VND100,000 (USD4.8) a bag with no point of origin or expiry date.

People's Doctor Nguyen Xuan Huong has examined three different bags of placenta and concluded that two out of three contained plastic and other undetermined ingredients.

This placenta is mostly imported illegally from China. Truong Quoc Cuong, Head of Drug Administration of Vietnam said there were no officially licensed medicines made from placenta available in the market, and that every drug required a point of origin, list of ingredients, production process and evidence of clinical trials.

 Placenta can easily be found

Doctors say sources of diseases

According to the Ministry of Health, placenta is categorised as a kind of waste after surgery that can infect people. Vice Director of Tu Du Hospital said that using placenta poses threat to one's heath because it could cause hepatitis B, HIV or rubella. The cooking time with placenta is not long or hot enough to kill all the viruses.

Dinh Cong Bay, a traditional doctor of HCMC Medicine Association said, "Dried placenta was considered a medicine from a long time ago, it was taken from healthy mom that gave birth to healthy child. However, nowadays, many infectious diseases are discovered so dried placenta with unknown origin is dangerous to users."

Former Head of Vietnam Orientally Traditional Medicine Association Nguyen Xuan Huong said that remedy using placenta have been in existence for thousands of years but in Vietnam as well as in China, there was no official documentation to confirm this. He also said that Vietnamese people are actually rarely use placenta.

The Drug Administration Division of HCMC Department of Health said that placenta was under tight control at obstetric hospitals such as Tu Du or Hung Vuong. Nguyen Viet Cuong, The chief Inspector of the local Health Department said that he would inspect and find out if locally produced medicines contained placenta or foetuses.