THE contraceptive pill has been blamed for the death of a 24-year-old Melbourne woman who was using it as part of her acne treatment.

Tanya Hayes, a student from Croydon, died on Monday, hours after collapsing in a car park.

Ms Hayes had been taking an oral contraceptive - recommended for patients using acne medication Roaccutane - for about four months.

Busy working and studying, Ms Hayes had ignored symptoms including "breathlessness" and "a nasty, hard cough" for about a fortnight.

Late Sunday night she collapsed outside a Ferntree Gully restaurant and was rushed to Angliss Hospital.

Ms Hayes died less than five hours later after a pulmonary embolism - blood clotting - in her lungs.

The hospital's director of emergency medicine, Associate Prof Graeme Thomson, said Ms Hayes's death had been "caused by blood clotting caused by factors related to taking the oral contraceptive pill".

Ms Hayes's devastated family said the risks should be printed clearly on the boxes of oral contraceptives.

"We want the precautions for the Pill written on the outside of the Pill (packaging)," said her father, Robert Hayes. "We want youngsters to know how important it is to read the awareness notices."

The fine print in the packaging of Yasmin, the contraceptive medication Ms Hayes had been taking, lists "breathlessness" as a "very rare . . . very serious side effect".

"If we had read the Pill's directions more carefully . . . maybe we would still have Tanya here," Ms Hayes's mother, Genevieve, said.

"My daughter wasn't a vain person, but she'd had acne for 13 years and just wanted to clear it up."

Ms Hayes's twin brothers, Lachlan and Simon, 21, said their beloved sister always put the health of others ahead of her own.

"She was smart, the dux of her school . . . and she was always the person who organised everyone else ," Lachlan said.

"She was nice to everyone."

Dr Stephen Shumack, secretary of the Australasian College of Dermatologists, said contraceptives were advised for women using Roaccutane.

Women using Roaccutane have an "extremely high risk of having a baby that is severely deformed" if they fall pregnant and contraceptives also boost the effectiveness of the acne medication, he said.

Dr Shumack said deaths linked to hormonal contraception was "certainly a recognised event, but it's extraordinarily rare".

According to the Therapeutic Goods Administration, oral contraceptives have been linked to three deaths in Australia since 1973. There have been 56 TGA reports of "suspected adverse events" linked to Yasmin since 2003, but no fatalities.

A spokeswoman for Bayer, the manufacturer of Yasmin, said Ms Hayes's death was being "investigated as a priority".

Dr Christine Tippett, president of the Royal Australian College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, said several factors apart from medication could cause blood clots.