A tattoo artist from Canada is using her skills to help burn victims who have discolored skin after their injuries.
Basma Hameed's first burn patient was actually herself. When she was a child, her face was burned from oil, leaving her with third degree scars all over her face. She went through 100 painful surgeries to heal her burns, but they left her face looking bright red, reported Mic.
"After having three failed eyebrow hair transplants, I decided to get permanent eyebrows tattooed," Hameed told Mic. "I saw the result immediately. I was so happy that I thought to myself - why not do the same procedure using skin tone pigments on my scar tissue, to camouflage the discoloration. At the time no one had heard of anything like it, and no one wanted to take the risk."
After tattooing her own pigment back onto her face in what's called paramedical micropigmentation, she was determined to use her newfound skill to help others.
"I knew that this would be something that would change lives," she told Mic.
Samira Omar, a 17-year-old patient, was viciously beaten and burned with boiling water by classmates while studying abroad, leaving her unrecognizable. Through several visits to Hameed, she was able to heal the physical scars of her incident.
"For her to tell me no I can actually have your color come back ... it was just something amazing," Omar told CBC News in a video.
Hameed's treatment is growing in demand worldwide, so she developed a unisex Scar Camouflage Concealer as an alternative to the paramedical micropigmentation procedure and sells it on her website.
"I would like to see the service being offered all over the world one day," Hameed told Mic. "My end goal is to ... eventually make this procedure accessible to people who need it everywhere."
