Colombian woman dies after illegal cosmetic surgery at unlicensed clinic

Yulixa Toloza walked into a cosmetic surgery clinic in southern Bogotá on a spring afternoon, accompanied by her friend Amalia Pardo. She was there for laser lipolysis—a fat-reduction procedure—and she felt confident about it. Other women she knew had done the same thing. The price was right: about three million pesos, roughly $810. A legitimate procedure with a qualified surgeon would have cost more than ten million pesos. She didn't ask too many questions.

Six days later, her body was found on the side of a road two hours outside the capital, in Cundinamarca province. The cause was a pulmonary embolism—a blood clot in the lungs, one of the most common and catastrophic complications of the procedure she'd undergone. The clinic where she'd had the surgery, Beauty Laser, had no medical license. It had only a commercial registration as a hair salon. The man who performed the procedure was a barber. The clinic owner, the administrator, and the barber are now in custody, along with two men accused of removing Toloza from the clinic and transporting her in a Chevrolet Sonic. One of the clinic operators fled to Venezuela and may never face extradition, given Venezuela's constitutional prohibition on extraditing its citizens.

What happened in those six days between Toloza's surgery and her death has become a window into a much larger failure—one that extends across Colombia's entire cosmetic surgery industry. The clinic operated openly on a busy street in Bogotá, with a large sign advertising laser lipolysis services. No one stopped it. No one checked its credentials. When Amalia saw her friend emerge from the procedure, Toloza was disoriented, pale, her pupils dilated. She could barely speak. The clinic staff told Amalia this was normal—just the sedative wearing off. She needed to sleep. Amalia left at four in the afternoon, leaving Toloza in the clinic's care.

When Amalia's friend Yury Mora arrived that evening with other women to spend the night with Toloza, the clinic staff said she had already left—that she'd requested to go home around 7:20 or 7:30 p.m. But Yury had seen the video Amalia recorded. She knew Toloza was in no condition to leave on her own. The friends alerted police. Security footage later showed two men carrying Toloza on their shoulders and loading her into the Chevrolet. The car left Bogotá around midnight. Five hours later, it was gone.

Lorena Beltrán, a journalist who has spent years investigating cosmetic surgery practices in Colombia and pushing for regulatory reform in Congress, calls these operations "garage clinics." They exist in plain sight, charging a fraction of legitimate market rates, cutting corners on everything from sterilization to qualifications. Beltrán has documented cases where women underwent abdominal tightening so aggressive they spent the rest of their lives walking hunched over. She has interviewed patients left with permanent deformities. Most cases don't end in death. Most end in silence—a woman too embarrassed or too afraid to report what happened, living with the consequences.

Damaris Romero, president of Colombia's Society of Plastic, Aesthetic and Reconstructive Surgery, explained to BBC Mundo what happens when someone without medical training performs laser lipolysis. The procedure removes fat cells that serve a function in the body. When those cells are removed, the body responds. Anemia is common. Fat embolism—where a fat cell enters a blood vessel and causes a catastrophic blockage—is a known risk. A qualified surgeon must not only know how to perform the procedure but be trained to recognize and manage complications. A barber cannot do this. A person with no medical degree cannot do this.

Yet the regulatory framework that should prevent this has failed repeatedly. Beltrán says the problem has three roots: unclear regulations, a state that doesn't enforce the ones that exist, and a lack of individual accountability. She has pushed a bill through Congress five times. Five times it has failed. The pessimism in her voice is audible: she doesn't know if she has the strength to keep fighting. The problem, she says, is not just the garage clinics or the unqualified practitioners. It extends to licensed doctors who act with negligence, who cut corners, who have killed people and faced no consequences.

Nubia Luz Tolosa, Yulixa's mother, learned of her daughter's death through the news. She told a local outlet that when she found out, all she could do was cry and despair. She couldn't get out of bed. She was in shock. She had wanted her daughter to come home alive.