Poster girl Aimee can helps others face the future

ANDREW GORRIE/The Dominion Post

PRETTY AS A PICTURE: A blemish-free Aimee Cornish beams from the back of a Valley Flyer bus. She is the face of a project to create a multimillion-dollar research centre, which will help people with disfigurements, such as the birthmarks she had as a child.

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Aimee Cornish hated being the centre of attention as a child.

She was just three days old when she sprouted a strawberry birthmark that nearly covered her left eye and another one on her lip.

"Growing up, I wasn't really aware of it at first – it was just something I had always had. But I became very shy and withdrawn. People would always want to know what it was, whether I had injured myself, if it hurt."

High-dose steroids saved her sight as a baby, and at the age of 10, she became one of the first patients to get publicly funded laser treatment at Hutt Hospital from plastic surgeon Swee Tan.

When she turned 12, Dr Tan operated to remove the lumpy residue completely.

"It was great to be able to start college without a birthmark and not attract attention for the wrong reasons."

Now 22, Ms Cornish is attracting public attention again for the right reasons – as poster girl for an ambitious project to create a multimillion-dollar research centre in the region, with her face adorning a Valley Flyer bus.

Ms Cornish said she was happy to front the campaign to raise $13.5 million for the Gillies McIndoe Research Institute. "I'm so thankful for what Swee Tan has done for me, he changed my life ... but it's possible that in future, with the research they're doing, even laser treatment will be a thing of the past."

The institute, named for Kiwi plastic surgery pioneers Sir Harold Delf Gillies and Sir Archibald McIndoe, will foster research into tissue engineering, blood vessel formation and the origins of birth defects and cancers.

About $3.5m is needed to set up and run the centre for two years, with $1m raised so far. Another $10m will be needed for an endowment fund for ongoing running costs.

Professor Tan, who leads a team making breakthrough discoveries into the origins of strawberry birthmarks, said plastic surgery did not just concern "appearance", though disfigurement could have a powerful psychological impact on someone's quality of life.

"But in some cases we're talking about potentially life-threatening conditions."

The research was likely to have positive spinoffs for other conditions, from cancer to arthritic joints needing replacement.