Baby in Tanzania born with lower body fused like a ‘mermaid’ in ultra-rare case
WARNING: GRAPHIC CONTENT
A baby in Tanzania was born with his lower body fused together like a “mermaid” in an ultra-rare case.
The newborn, who weighed just over 4.5 pounds, was missing an arm and an anal opening and also had ambiguous genitalia, making sex assignment difficult. The baby only lived about five minutes.
Doctors diagnosed sirenomelia, or “mermaid syndrome,” which has only been recorded a few times.
The case appeared earlier this month in an American medical journal.
Sirenomelia is almost always fatal, and only one percent of affected babies survive more than a week after birth.
Doctors who treated the baby called the condition “incompatible” with life due to “multiple defects in critical systems.”
The National Organization for Rare Diseases (NORD) states that it is not clear what causes sirenomelia and that most cases occur randomly.
It is believed that tissues do not develop and separate properly in the womb, leading to the lower limbs fusing.
The newborn’s mother, a 22-year-old girl with no other children, was a rural farmer who had only attended two prenatal visits.
He had no underlying illness and tested negative for syphilis and HIV.
The mother reported no history of smoking, drinking, drug abuse, or pesticide exposure.
However, she used fertilizers regularly because of her work as a farmer, which may have exposed the baby to harmful toxins, doctors said.
One of the most famous of Sirenomelia was that of Milagros Cerrón, a Peruvian girl who was nicknamed the ‘Little Mermaid’ after her birth in 2004. She lived to be 15 years old and died while waiting for a kidney transplant.
Doctors did not perform X-rays or post-mortem examinations “due to cultural taboo and restrictions regarding the handling of deceased people.” There was no laboratory capacity to perform genetic testing.
Very few cases of sironomelia have been reported in the medical literature.
One of the most famous was that of Milagros Cerrón, a Peruvian girl who was nicknamed the ‘Little Mermaid’ after her birth in 2004.
Despite having only one kidney, she not only beat the odds to survive after birth, but also thrived after her legs were separated as a baby. However, he died in 2019 at age 15 while waiting for a kidney transplant.
The case report was published in the Medical Case Report Magazine.