Dutch women reimbursed for breast implant removals

Dutch women wanting to replace potentially defective breast implants made by now-defunct French company PIP will be paid back in full, the Dutch health insurance federation said Thursday.

"The removal of PIP breast implants and replacing them with new implants will be reimbursed in full," the umbrella-body Dutch Health Insurers (ZN) said in a statement issued on its website.

"Health insurers will pay in full regardless of whether implants were done for medical or cosmetic reasons," it said, adding that women who received the sub-standard implants should "not be duped into having to pay".

Dutch health authorities on January 11 recommended the removal of breast implants made by PIP, which affects around 1,000 women in the Netherlands.

Initially, the Dutch health authority recommended only that women with PIP implants should see their doctors, but changed its stance after confusion over the issue.

PIP implants have been banned in the Netherlands since early 2010.

French police on Thursday arrested PIP's founder Jean-Claude Mas as part of a manslaughter probe.

More than 400,000 women around the world are believed to have received implants made by Poly Implant Prothese (PIP), which was shut down in 2010 after it was revealed to have been using industrial-grade silicone gel that caused abnormally high rupture rates and sparked a global health scare.

(c) 2012 AFP