A
baby in India has been born with two heads but doctors are hopeful
that the boy can be saved.
The
unnamed boy was born in Jaipur, the capital and largest city of the
state of Rajasthan, on Wednesday and taken to hospital for tests
immediately afterwards.
Dr.
S.D. Sharma, medical superintendent of J.K. Lone Hospital, said that
such cases are very rare, especially in boys and are known as
Dicephalic Parapagus. He added that this is the first case in
Rajasthan and second in India.
The
boy's heads, nervous system and backbone are separate. The backbone
is joined below the pelvis and he has one rib cage and shoulder
girdle.
Most
of the time, children that are Dicephalic Parapagus are born dead
and, in the vast majority of cases, are girls, reports CBS. But
doctors are hoping they can help the boy.
Another
famous case of conjoined dicephalic parapagus twins are Americans
Abigail and Brittany Hensel, whose story was featured on the TLC
reality TV series Abby & Brittany.
Earlier
in September 2011, two 11-month-old girls from Sudan joined at the
top of their heads were successfully separated at London's Great
Ormond Street Hospital for Children.
The
girls, from Sudan, were craniopagus twins, which occurs in about one
in 2.5 million births.
The
infants were born with the tops of their heads fused – an extremely
rare condition that only one in ten million survive.
Conjoined
twins occur in about one in 100,000 births.
They
develop when one fertilised egg fails to separate fully, or the egg
separates and then fuses together again inside the womb.
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