The Minister of Health of the Zenica-Doboj Canton, Aida Salčinović, caused severe damage to the patient’s face as a result of an infection caused by an aesthetic treatment performed in a public toilet, it was stated in the indictment of the ZDK Prosecutor’s Office.
It says: Emma Maslo (CIN)
In the indictment against Dr. Aida Salčinović, the Cantonal Prosecutor’s Office in Zenica described the crime she is accused of: “She injected dermal fillers into a patient (…) in an area that was not clean (…)”.
A patient of Dr. Salčinović described this event from 2021 in more detail to the journalists of the Center for Investigative Journalism (CIN): “We agreed to meet in the parking lot in front of the shopping center (in Visoko, op. a.) and at her suggestion it happened in that shopping center, in a public toilet. (…) It’s a very narrow small space where two people can hardly fit”.
Not long after that, her face began to deform from painful welts, and unbearable headaches became a daily occurrence.
A move that defies the rules of the medical profession has been the subject of an indictment since the fall of 2025 accusing the doctor and current Minister of Health of the Zenica-Doboj Canton (ZDK) Aida Salčinović of seriously injuring a 47-year-old IB patient from Visoko. She pleaded not guilty at the first hearing.
In addition, CIN journalists discovered that Salčinović was then a doctor of emergency medicine without the specialization necessary for such procedures. The prosecution did not explain to the journalists why they did not include it in the indictment.
Patient IB spoke to CIN in August 2025 about “the worst experience of her life”. At that time, she had already filed a criminal complaint against Dr. Salčinović, so due to the safety of the proceedings, she did not want to come forward publicly.
Treatment in the Visoc shopping center
“Every woman wants to freshen up, including me,” said IB to a CIN journalist, apologizing in advance for the expected condemnation from the environment.
She says that she met Aida Salčinović in a Sarajevo beauty salon in 2020. “A large number of women were there, all of them were waiting for her treatments with Botox and hyaluronic acid. And that’s how I found out about her,” IB begins her story.
The conversation about beauty led to an appointment for the injection of filler in the cheeks – hyaluronic acid, which is applied as a gel by injection to fill wrinkles and improve the contours of the face.
The first agreed meeting in Sarajevo did not happen, so they agreed to “meet halfway”, in Visoko. There, in the toilet of the local shopping center in June 2021, Dr. Salčinović injected IB dermal filler into her face and took 700 marks in cash from her, without receipt, claims the patient.
“Far from the fact that she then, at that moment, showed me what she was injecting me with, that she gave me some kind of product code, that I signed some kind of consent. (…) I never dreamed that something could go wrong.”
According to the Rulebook on the closer conditions of space, equipment and personnel for the establishment and performance of health activities in health institutions, such procedures must be performed in a registered medical office where specialists in plastic, aesthetic and reconstructive surgery, maxillofacial surgery, ophthalmology or dermatovenerology work, and from January 2026 minimal procedures are also allowed in dental offices. The premises must meet hygiene standards and have appropriate equipment. Before the procedure, patients should receive all information about the procedure.
The owner of the Center for Aesthetic Medicine and Aesthetic Surgery “Tuzla”, dr. Musfaha Burgić says that patients must receive a card with described procedures and information about the preparation used. They should be informed about everything beforehand, and before the procedure they should sign a consent in which possible complications are described.
“None of this was in Visoko,” says IB
Not long after that, IB started to feel pain on the left side of her face. “I called her. (…) She (Dr. Salčinović) says it’s OK, it’s a completely normal reaction at the beginning.”
But nothing seemed normal – the face became inflamed and swollen, and sores appeared on the cheeks, along with visual disturbances and headaches.
“These are not classic headaches. I don’t even know how to describe it to you. You just fall apart, you can’t see, your eyes are blurry, the horror,” says I. B, recalling that she sent photos and videos to the doctor, asking her for help. However, the condition worsened, so Salčinović suggested blood plasma therapy a year after the procedure. IB agreed. “I was already in a kind of despair. Everything took a long time, it hindered me in my functioning, in my work, in everything.”
At the time, IB did not know that Dr. Salčinović did not have adequate professional training or permission to perform these treatments. Namely, Salčinović graduated in 2010 from the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Sarajevo and in the same year she started working at the Cantonal Hospital in Zenica. She specialized in emergency medicine in 2015, and with that specialization, according to regulations, she could not perform aesthetic medicine treatments.
She only started her specialization in the field of dermatovenerology at the Zenica Cantonal Hospital in 2025, four years after the controversial procedure, the Ministry of Health of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina confirmed for CIN.
“At that time I was inclined to believe. (…) We look at people wearing white coats somehow differently,” says IB
The fight to get back to the old ways
In blood plasma therapy, the doctor takes cells and proteins from venous blood, and re-injection promotes skin and subcutaneous tissue renewal, as stated in the explanation on the website of the Sarajevo Center for Aesthetic Surgery “Naša mala klinika”.
“Dr. Salčinović performed the first such therapy in the middle of 2022 in a hairdressing and beauty salon in Austria,” says I. B, and salon co-owner Edin Bešić tells CIN that he has known Salčinović for a long time, but that he does not perform such treatments and that the patient is not telling the truth.
The second treatment was in Zenica in a commercial space that looked like a beauty salon. “There was no inscription, the windows were tinted, i.e. covered with papers or some kind of foil (…) and it was locked,” said IB
When that treatment didn’t help either, she decided to seek another doctor’s opinion. dr. Salčinović took her to her colleague’s hospital, so that the next day she would be treated with enzymes that she injected at the Cantonal Hospital in Zenica, and the IB says that she did not fill out any medical documentation and was not included in the institution’s protocol.
Director of the Hospital prim. Ph.D. In a letter to CIN, Tarik Zulović stated that they could not find a trace of this event in the official records, and that the video recordings were deleted in the meantime in accordance with the rules for saving recordings.
A few days later, in October 2022, they found themselves again in an unnamed salon. Dr. Salčinović came with a male person, said that she did not have time and that her clients were waiting for her in Sarajevo. “That was the last time we saw each other,” IB recalls
Patient IB, she says, realized that she was left to her own devices. From 2023, her journey to recovery begins, from doctor’s office to doctor’s office in several countries – from France, through Germany, where she was in the hospital for a month, to Bosnia and Herzegovina. Instead of breaking down, the filler remained trapped in the tissue, and the symptoms of severe infection have since spread to the other side of the face.
“I had days where I couldn’t get out of bed. I couldn’t walk. I was broken.”
Professor at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Sarajevo and head of the Clinic for Reconstructive and Plastic Surgery dr. Sanela Salihagić explained to CIN that after the application of hyaluronic fillers and botox, there is a possibility of complications, just like with other medical procedures. They can be numerous: from infection to decay of part of the skin, septic conditions and muscle paralysis.
Specialists interviewed by CIN journalists say that it is very difficult and ungrateful to solve complications in patients who have had procedures performed by other doctors or in persons who are not even trained for it.
“I am very open to help anyone, I give him advice on what he should do, but he has to fight with the complications who made it all together,” says plastic and reconstructive surgery specialist dr. Alemko Čvorak from “Our Small Clinic”.
IB, he says, reported its case to the Agency for Medicines and Medical Devices of BiH and the ZDK inspection at the end of 2022 and the beginning of 2023, and then to the Zenica Cantonal Hospital. She claims that the Agency told her that they could not react because she did not show them the original filler code that the doctor was obliged to give her at the first treatment. During the inspection, she was told that they did not find the business premises where she met the doctor. The inspectorate, however, answered for CIN only that based on the report, they carried out a larger number of inspections.
CIN invited Aida Salčinović several times to talk about this topic, but she refused to do so while the court proceedings against her are ongoing.
However, nine months before the indictment was filed, she responded to an inquiry sent by CIN to the ZDK Anti-Corruption Office about her engagements outside the Ministry. She explained that she voluntarily carries out “education” as part of the team of the company “San Tech Medik”.
This company has been showing aesthetic procedures on its social networks for years, which Dr. Salčinović worked as a client of “San Tech Medik”, and in 2019 she was advertised as their guest providing beauty services in Austria. In addition, Salčinović herself has been publishing aesthetic procedures that she has done on her social networks for years.
In the end, in the summer of 2023, IB turned to the Prosecutor’s Office of the ZDK, which at the end of 2025 filed an indictment against dr. Salčinović. The trial began at the Municipal Court in Visoko, where she pleaded not guilty to causing serious bodily injury to IB
“As for some of my personal satisfaction and satisfaction, I will never get it. (…) My health is irreversibly destroyed, today I am a sick person, I am disabled, (…) unable to work, to earn money so that I could live normally”, says IB
(TIP/Photo: Illustration: Željko Todorović (CIN)
