BEIJING: A four-year-old boy in China had to have his finger amputated after his father took him to a foot massage shop to treat a fungal infection in his nail.
The boy, surnamed Lin, was taken by his father to the Luozhendong Foot Massage Parlour in southwestern China’s Chongqing Municipality, to treat an infection in his left index finger nail in July 2023, China Consumer News reported on Sept 26.
The shop claimed that it had a medicine called “nail removing cream”, which they said could work wonders for the boy’s problem.
They applied the cream on the boy’s infected finger nail, and bound it up with elastic bandage. The treatment cost 600 yuan (US$86).
Two days later, the father found his son’s finger had atrophied and turned black. He rushed him to the hospital, where doctors diagnosed gangrene.
The doctor said Lin’s left index finger tip had to be amputated to avoid further infections.
The boy was graded to have a 10th-class handicap.
His father demanded more than 200,000-yuan (US$29,000) in compensation from the shop, which rejected his claim thinking it was too much.
The father reported the matter to the local district consumer council in February.
The council discovered the “nail removing cream” was not properly licensed. It also only had sterilisation properties and was not able to cure anything.
The council also discovered the shop’s name was different from that on their business licence.
It held the shop responsible for the boy’s handicap, and urged it to suspend its business, and give the boy’s family 160,000 yuan (US$23,000).
The local government reminded consumers to seek hospital treatment for health conditions.
Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) holds that the foot is the body’s root. As a result, many believe a foot bath and foot massage can be an effective solution to fatigue and minor illness.
Some foot massage shops have been punished for advertising TCM treatments without a licence.
In May, a court in eastern China’s Zhejiang province was reported by Jiancha Daily Newspaper to have prosecuted 16 people, who scammed three million yuan (US$428,000) out of more than 10 visitors to their foot massage shop.
They sold the victims a massage cream they claimed to have a secret TCM recipe that could cure all kinds of illness in 2022.
On social media, some also said Lin’s father had been irresponsible.
“What an irresponsible father, taking his son to a foot massage shop instead of a hospital to treat his disease,” one person said on Douyin. - South China Morning
