Stakeholders in Nigeria’s aesthetic medicine industry have called for stronger regulation and professional standards to sanitise the sector, protect patients and help curb foreign exchange outflows linked to medical tourism.
- +Stakeholders push regulation of Nigeria’s growing aesthetic medicine sector
The call was made at the second edition of the Masters of Beauty organised by UNNO Health Group for professionals across West Africa at the weekend.
The call was made at the second edition of the Masters of Beauty organised by UNNO Health Group for professionals across West Africa at the weekend.
Speaking at the event, Hilda Titiloye, founder and chief executive of UNNO Health Group, said the company had built an ecosystem in aesthetic medicine and dermatology by providing services, manufacturing medical products and offering educational training.
According to her, the event was aimed at building a community of beauty professionals in the medical space, including aesthetic physicians, dermatologists, plastic surgeons, nurses and dentists practising aesthetic medicine.
Titiloye said stakeholders were seeking to create a stronger voice within the industry that could advocate for laws and structure to “sanitise the space” and ensure patients are protected. “We want for there to be some way for everyone to stay within their space, lean on each other, work together in a way that the patient at the end of the day, who is the primary beneficiary, is really protected,” she said.
She added that the sector was already helping to reverse medical tourism, noting that many procedures Nigerians previously travelled abroad for are now being carried out locally.
Titiloye also said the beauty industry was creating employment opportunities across different levels of care, from medical professionals to vocationally trained beauty workers.
She said the group was also launching the UNO Institute, a professional training arm designed to provide postgraduate training in aesthetic medicine for medical professionals.
Mohammed Danmallam, Chief Executive of NigerMed Skincare Clinic, warned that social media trends and commercial pressures were changing the nature of aesthetic medicine and increasing risks to patients.
Speaking on the theme “Putting the Medicine Back in Aesthetic Medicine”, Danmallam said aesthetic medicine must remain grounded in anatomy, ethics, patient safety and evidence-based practice.
“We must pause and ask ourselves a fundamental question: have we begun to prioritise aesthetics at the expense of medicine?” he said.
He warned against poorly trained and unqualified individuals entering the industry for commercial reasons, stressing that proper training, regulation and continued medical education were critical.
“As the industry expands, we are seeing an increasing number of poorly trained unqualified persons entering the space, driven by commercial opportunity rather than professional medical competence,” he said.
Danmallam also raised concerns about what he described as the “medicalisation of normality”, saying many young people now viewed normal physical features as defects because of unrealistic standards amplified by social media filters. He urged practitioners to resist “marketing gimmicks” and focus on science-based care.
Perpetua Ibekwe, who spoke on the regulatory perspective of aesthetic medicine, said Nigeria currently lacks a dedicated regulatory board for the sector.
According to her, practitioners currently rely on different regulatory agencies, including professional councils for medical workers, agencies regulating consumables and health facilities, and the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission.
She said the absence of a dedicated board created challenges because different categories of professionals with varying levels of training now operate within the same industry.
“If you don’t have a board to make sure everybody sticks to their area of specialisation, that’s going to be a problem,” she said.
