Bihar baby with gut outside body.

LESS THAN a fortnight ago, a child was born in Bihar with his heart outside the body. On Saturday, a woman gave birth to a girl with her small intestine outside the body.

The baby girl is suffering from a birth defect called exomphalos major, in which the infant's intestine or other abdominal organs stick out of the navel, according to a doctor at the government- run Patna Medical College and Hospital ( PMCH) here.

Babli Devi, 24, a resident of Nand Bigaha village, gave birth to the baby at a private nursing home.

The baby was immediately referred to PMCH. Babli, who is married to a daily- wage labourer, gave birth to the baby in a Caesarean operation.

Doctors were shocked to find her small intestine in a closed cavity outside the body.

" This could be life- threatening if the intestine is not repositioned to its original place," said Dr Jawahar Prasad Gupta, a paediatric surgeon at PMCH. But that entails a cumbersome surgical process. " The process of placing a six- foot- long intestine back inside a small abdomen is a complicated process. In a layman's term, it is like stuffing two tonne of something into a sack that can accommodate only one tonne," he said.

Dr Prasad said the surgery might be done after two months.

" At the moment, her embryonic membrane could be ruptured; so we have given her medicines to make it stronger," the doctor said. " We can go for what is called a staged operation." For the as- yet unnamed baby's father Ajit, this is nothing short of a nightmare. He said he did not have money to meet the cost of the Caesarean operation. To bear the cost of another surgery, he said he would have to seek the help of villagers. The baby is his first child and, therefore, special, he added.

This is the second case of complicated birth of a child in Bihar recently. A poor woman from Sitamarhi gave birth to a baby recently whose heart was protruding outside the body. That baby was born at a private nursing home in Muzaffarpur. The baby was subsequently taken to the All India Institute of Medical Sciences ( AIIMS), where a team of doctors led by Dr A. K. Bisoi performed a successful operation to relocate the heart inside the body.

A voluntary organisation later announced it would adopt the child suffering from a rare congenital defect called ectopia cordis, in which the heart is abnormally located. In the most common form, the heart protrudes outside the chest through a split sternum ( breastbone).

Since being admitted to AIIMS, the baby has drawn comparisons with Christopher Wall Jr from the US, who survived the same birth defect.

Wall, whose name figures in the Guinness World Records for this ' feat', was born with the complication in New Jersey in 1975. He celebrated his 34th birthday earlier this month.

Immediately after his birth on August 10, 1975, Christopher was shifted to hospital. A team of doctors stabilised the baby, put him on a ventilator and checked for other abnormalities.

During his first 18 months of life, Christopher endured 15 life- threatening surgeries, all of which were attempts to place his heart into the anatomically correct position.

Last year in India, surgeons at a Bangalore- based hospital successfully operated upon a girl born as a " parasitic twin" with four hands. She was adopted by a Rajkot- based NGO.

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