A doctor has warned people getting fillers and anti-wrinkle injections such as Botox from non-medical practitioners.

Dr Amina Ahmed's comments echo those made by a group of MPs (The All-Party Parliamentary Group on Beauty, Aesthetics and Wellbeing) which last week said that there should be an on-site medical professional present before procedures, such as fillers, are administered.

Dr Amina, who has been a doctor for 20 years, is also a medico-legal expert witness and has seen first hand the effects that botched procedures have on people. She opened her own aesthetics and cosmetic dermatology clinic, “Skin Britannia”, in Bradford in 2019, and provides people with a service which puts their safety as her number one priority.

Dr Amina said, “In my clinic, I have seen an exponential rise in people requesting dissolution of fillers. I have seen many clients who have unfortunately put their trust in someone who just doesn’t have the skills required to do a good and safe job.

"As regulated clinics closed over the lockdowns, these unregulated non-medical practitioners continued to work, by offering mobile services, under the radar. Unfortunately for those who accepted their services, I am now also beginning to see these clients filtering through in my work as a Medico-Legal Expert Witness.

"The fact is that many of these non-medical practitioners will have only had one day of training, which just isn’t enough to learn about all the arteries, nerves, muscles, and lymphatic drainage in the face and body, let alone how to inject someone safely, and minimise the risk of complications. This lack of knowledge then leads to the complications we are presented with.

"At our clinic in Bradford, we have policies and procedures in place to ensure the safety of our clients, and the emergency treatment ready and available, should there be a complication,. Not everywhere offers this attention to detail.”

The parliamentary group has recommended that customers must have a face-to-face consultation with an on-site medical professional before procedures, and any treatment must be overseen by the same practitioner to ensure they can provide remedial treatment if necessary.

The parliamentary group is also calling for the government to establish a national licensing scheme to govern the oversight of non-surgical cosmetic treatments, which would mark the end of a minimal regulatory system that is "fragmented, obscure and out of date". Other recommendations include the introduction of advertising restrictions on dermal fillers.

"Any qualified medical practitioner starting anew will be far more nervous about filler procedures, rather than anti-wrinkle injections because we are aware of just what can go wrong. When treatments like this do go wrong, and there is a delay in dissolving the filler, not only can they look frightful, but they can have irreversible serious long term effects, some of which may require years of corrective treatments including surgery", Dr Amina said.

“The irony here is that fillers are considered a medical device, rather than a medicine. For this reason, access to fillers is as easy as buying a band-aid. However, the treatment to dissolve fillers, in case of any complication, (minor or serious) is licensed as a medicine, so those unqualified practitioners cannot access it.

"When it comes to the more established filler manufacturers and pharmacies which supply fillers, they will not sell filler to anyone who cannot evidence qualifications and training to administer these products. This then means that unqualified practitioners are using products that are sub-par in quality and safety."

'At my clinic, we always do our best to help these, often young, people to reverse the damage done, and this can take me working quite late into the evening because I cannot turn anyone away who may have a life altering complications.

"Unfortunately, at this time there is nowhere near enough regulation for these types of procedures."