Venezuela Offers to Remove French-Made Breast Implants

Venezuela's public health service will remove for free French-made breast implants feared to be at risk of rupturing, Health Minister Eugenia Sader said Tuesday.

"Patients who wish to have breast implants made by the French company Poly Implant Prothese (PIP) may head to hospitals with plastic surgery units to have them removed at no cost," state news agency AVN quoted Sader as saying.

France's health ministry has advised 30,000 women in France with PIP implants to have them removed, saying that while there is no proven cancer risk, the prostheses could rupture.

Any woman who declines the removal must have a breast scan every six months, the ministry added.

Prosecutors in Marseille, near PIP's home base of Seyne-sur-Mer, have received more than 2,000 complaints from French women who received the implants, and have opened a criminal investigation into the firm.

Documents obtained by Agence France Presse showed tens of thousands of women in more than 65 countries, mainly in South America and western Europe, received implants produced by PIP.