Dr. Vivian Ebelechukwu Akaenyi is a medical aesthetics non-surgical doctor. She is the CEO of Skin Salva Med Spa. In this interview, Akaenyi talks about medical aesthetics, the side effects of using Botox and fillers and growth in the industry.

As a doctor of medical aesthetics what services do you provide?
I’m a doctor in medical aesthetics, I am a non-surgical doctor. In my field, we work with hyaluronic acid. Rather than taking you under the knife to achieve the desired outcome, we work with fillers. We give you solutions. Instead of cutting you open and getting this fixed here and getting that fixed here, we give you solutions. We have products that we work with to give you the same result you are looking for without surgery.
If you want a fuller breast, or standing breast, we have a procedure for that without surgery. For a flat tummy, we have procedures without surgery. I provide Botox services, using injections on the face to fill up all the wrinkles. We provide services that help clients to get rid of wrinkles, and also to fill up the face. If you want to lose some weight on your face right now, I would slim down your face in about 40 minutes and you will see the result.

Medical aesthetics industry
Right now, medical aesthetics is a multi-million dollar making business. It’s fast growing. It keeps growing as the day goes by. So let me be honest to you, in this business, I have 70 per cent male clients. They take care of their skin. They come to fill up their skin as well, to do fillers on their skin, clean up their skin. Women use cream, men don’t have the patience for cream, so they come outrightly. Women would really find the cheaper one, which is cream. I also have an aesthetic academy where people come, pay and learn.

What are the side effects?
No side effects. When you get side effects in anything in life is when you abuse it. Anything you abuse definitely comes with a side effect. As long as you don’t abuse it, as long as you stay safe, you know, that’s 100 per cent okay.

How often can one take Botox? And at what age?
If you must take Botox, it’s a 12 months to 18 months interval. Well, some people age real fast. So, it’s quite dicey. I have patients as young as 25. I have patients as old as 70 to come do their filling.

Tell us about Project Rescue Widows?
We are touring all of Nigeria’s states, attempting to select 100 widows per state with the primary goal of alleviating poverty. Our plan is to be able to reach 1,000 widows every year. So, if we’re looking at reaching 1,000 widows every year, we’re looking at combining 10 states in Nigeria. We want to lift them out of poverty, structure their lives, and restore what they have lost. These widows, who are mostly homeless, are the primary caregivers for their small children. Our main goals are to identify the skills these widows possess, the things they were doing before losing their balance, and the things they can start doing right away. They can start doing something else if they decide they no longer want to carry on with what they are doing. Therefore, we find a way to equip them with whatever it is. We have profiled the 100 widows who were chosen from among the 20 local governments in Lagos State, Nigeria; however, the main event, which will provide them with startup capital, equipment is scheduled for September 8.

What were the criteria for selecting these widows?
It was difficult to choose these widows. During the profile process, five or seven women who are not widows came forward to identify as widows.
For the widows, we ensure that their husbands are truly dead. The project does not include baby mamas or single mothers. Our focus is on widows—those who have lost hope, become unbalanced, whose in-laws have amassed everything they own, and those who do not even know where their next meal is coming from.
The least that well-meaning Nigerians can do is rise up and assist those who are living in extreme poverty in their nation, Nigeria. I urge Nigerians to step outside of their comfort zone and do what is necessary. If you do not see it as a show of love, consider it a show of self-improvement.

What’s the budget for this upcoming widow’s empowerment?
We’re looking at buying not just machines for these women. We already did profiling, like I mentioned. A few of them already said they want a tailoring machine. A few of them said they want a grinding machine. A few of them are too old for us to even start a business for them.
A few of them live on the streets of Lagos. They don’t have a home. So they need shelter, not a machine. In our previous outreach, we rented houses for some widows that lived on the streets. We paid two years rent for them. Every six months, we give them food, money and cash gifts. And we have given them N200,000 each to start up their little small-scale business that they intended to do. So it goes beyond buying machines for these ones.

You are a skin care specialist, who is into beauty and fashion, what inspired this outreach to widows?
It came from a place of generosity, love, care, and compassion. I reached out to others with what little I had. As a child, I never ate alone, and I always shared what little I had with others. I prefer to eat with others, so my mother would usually invite the neighborhood kids over. Because she knows for certain that I would not eat that food alone. I was fortunate to grow up around people who truly understood the meaning of love. I felt loved from the start, despite not knowing what that meant from my father or my siblings.

When did you start this journey, and how has it been so far?
I started in 2016 two years after moving to Lagos, but we were incorporated in 2022. However, it started when I was in school. I started empowering women financially. It has consistently been a way of life moving forward. I therefore would not say that I began on this day or that day.
Seeing so many beggars on the streets of Lagos brought me to tears and broke my heart. When I got back home, I decided to start an empowerment scheme. Initially, I would distribute cooked food, water, ribena, and packets of indomie to beggars on the street in Lagos.

How many people have you empowered in terms of this kind of project that you’re taking on now?
It has not really been a wonderful experience, I must say. It is satisfactory. It gives me satisfaction to actually do these things. But it’s very depressing because there are people you meet on the street, you find out you cannot help them, you are depressed automatically meeting them. Because these ones are going through hell. Because 99.9% of the time, you might not really know what to do. It goes beyond just giving money. If you choose to listen to these people you will find out that you feel their pain.

Is this the first time you’re having a project targeting widows?
No, 2018 was the first outreach we had for100 widows. We ended up empowering 104 widows. It was held in Abagana in Anambra State. What we did with them then was share food items and cash gifts as well. In 2022, we empowered 124 persons. I have single handedly sponsored the projects till last year, 2023, when we decided to launch the Katalog Foundation. That was the first time we got sponsors. Before then, everything, 100 per cent, I did on my own.

Are you by any chance wanting to collaborate with the government and just want to do this on your own?
Currently we are doing this on our own. If we have collaborations from the government, fantastic. It will be easier for us to move and get into other states as well. If we have collaborations from the government, Lagos, for example, it will be fantastic. It will make it easier for us to deliver. It will make it easier for us to adopt more widows within the process. In the meantime, we are looking at 100 widows according to our capacity. But with the collaboration from governments across other states, it could be the decisive factor to the next state we would get into.