Health authorities in Thailand confirmed Wednesday that a Bangkok clinic is being examined by officials after a customer died following a cosmetic penile procedure performed there.
The customer, Igho Ubiribo, was a 43-year-old businessman and social media personality born in Nigeria who held British citizenship. His death occurred on March 6 in Bangkok, hours after he was given a hyaluronic acid injection. That injection was identified as the reason he died in a ruling handed down last month by a coroner in London, whose role is to formally establish how a person died.
Records from the clinic’s managers, relayed through the health ministry, indicate Ubiribo had been visiting since 2024 and had received five separate enlargement injections over that period. Four were carried out across 2024 and 2025. On the final visit, dated March 5, he was administered 40 milliliters of filler. Investigators were told the treating physician had advised breaking that dose into two appointments, but that Ubiribo asked for it all to be delivered at once.
The August coroner’s report described what happened afterward. While receiving a massage following the filler, Ubiribo reported pain in his chest and then collapsed. Emergency responders suspected a pulmonary embolism and brought him to a hospital by ambulance, though he lost consciousness before a CT scan could be done. Resuscitation efforts ran past 100 minutes, and he was pronounced dead at roughly 1:00 am. As the report put it, “Post-mortem examination and toxicology determined the cause of death to be due to the hyaluronic acid injection.”
Ministry officials went to the clinic in central Bangkok on Monday. According to a health ministry official who spoke to AFP, the review centers on whether the facility carries a valid license and adhered to required safety and health procedures. Separately, Bangkok police are running their own inquiry, confirmed by senior officer Utit Soodjai.
Thai Health Minister Pattana Promphat framed the government’s stance in cautious terms. “When it comes to medical procedures, we advocate for the highest level of caution,” he told reporters. In a statement, he said the investigation was meant “to ensure fairness for everyone and to reassure both local and international patients that they are receiving safe, high-standard and valuable care in Thailand”.
The death has stirred fresh discussion around medical tourism, a sector in which Thailand draws large numbers of foreign visitors, including those seeking cosmetic work. Fillers made from hyaluronic acid are a common tool in aesthetic medicine and are generally regarded as low-risk and minimally invasive.
Online, Ubiribo went by “Tiny” and “Ego” and had built an Instagram following of 185,000, where he often shared images of an upscale life alongside his wife, Danielle. The scale of Thailand’s aesthetic industry is considerable: government data from 2024 counted 7,000 such clinics nationwide, 2,000 of them in Bangkok, with projections putting the market at $7.51 billion by 2027, roughly triple its 2020 level.
