Tragic ‘mermaid baby’ is born with a fused lower body and no sexual organs
In an extremely rare case, a baby was born in Tanzania with its lower body fused together like a ‘mermaid’
WARNING: GRAPHIC CONTENT
In an extremely rare case, a baby was born in Tanzania with its lower body fused together like a ‘mermaid’.
The newborn, who weighed just over 2.5 kg, was missing one arm and an anal opening and also had ambiguous genitalia, making it difficult to assign a gender. The child only lived for about five minutes.
Doctors diagnosed sirenomelia, or ‘mermaid syndrome’, which has only been recorded a handful of times.
The case was noted earlier this month in an American medical journal.
Sirenomelia is almost always fatal; only one percent of affected children survive longer than a week after birth.
The doctors who treated the baby called the condition “incompatible” with life due to “multiple defects in critical systems.”
The National Organization for Rare Disorders (NORD) states that it is unclear what causes sirenomelia, and that most cases occur randomly.
It is thought that tissues do not develop or separate properly in the uterus, leading to the lower limbs fusing together.
The newborn’s mother, a 22-year-old with no other children, was a rural farmer who had attended only two prenatal visits.
She had no underlying medical conditions and tested negative for syphilis and HIV.
The mother reported no history of smoking, drinking, drug abuse, or pesticide exposure.
However, she regularly used fertilizer due to her work as a farmer, which may have exposed the baby to harmful toxins, the doctors noted.
One of the most famous Sirenomelia was that of Milagros Cerron, a Peruvian girl who was named the ‘Little Mermaid’ after her birth in 2004. She turned 15 and died while waiting for a kidney transplant.
The doctors did not perform X-rays or post-mortem examinations “due to cultural taboo and restrictions on dealing with or deceased persons.” There was no laboratory capacity for genetic testing.
Very few cases of sironomelia have been reported in the medical literature.
One of the most famous was that of Milagros Cerron, a Peruvian girl who was named the ‘Little Mermaid’ after her birth in 2004.
Despite having only one kidney, she not only overcame the odds to survive after birth, but also thrived after her legs were separated as an infant. However, she died in 2019 at the age of 15 while awaiting a kidney transplant.
The case report was published in the Journal of Medical Case Reports.