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A baby born with a rare congenital defect known as sirenomelia or 'mermaid syndrome' remains alive two weeks after being found abandoned outside a children's hospital in central China's Hunan Province. The baby is receiving round-the-clock medical care.   .

The baby, 21 centimeters in height and weighing 2.45 kg, is in a stable condition, said Xu Zhiyue, head of the intensive care department of the Hunan Provincial Children's Hospital, in the provincial capital Changsha.

Ultrasonic tests have shown the baby is a boy.

Doctors were keeping the baby alive with peritoneal dialysis, said Xu. The treatment is used on patients suffering kidney failure. It does the work healthy kidneys would normally do by cleaning the blood, removing waste and excess fluid from the body.

The baby was found at the hospital gates apparently abandoned by the parents and admitted to the hospital on November 12. A note found inside the child's clothing said only that the baby was born on November 9.

The baby's two legs are joined from thigh to heel. Doctors say the child also suffers from severe internal defects – there's no kidney or urinary tract, its heart does not function properly, the alimentary tract is deformed and intestines obstructed.

"It's very difficult to conduct peritoneal dialysis on newborns but the procedure is producing positive results," said Zhu Yimin, president of the hospital. The dialysis was helping the baby discharge waste from its body and creating better conditions for further treatment.

Sirenomelia, or 'mermaid syndrome' occurs in one out of 70,000 births. The condition is almost always fatal within days of delivery due to the vital organ defects and because of complications associated with abnormal kidney and bladder development and function.

There are only two known cases of children who suffer from 'mermaid syndrome' alive in the world today. One is Tiffany Yorks, a 17-year-old American girl born with sirenomelia whose legs were successfully separated when she was a baby. The other is two-year-old Peruvian girl Milagros Cerron who underwent an operation to separate her legs last year.

Doctors are studying the Hunan baby to determine an operation schedule, said Zhu. The plan was to first operate on the digestive tract and deal with the intestinal obstruction to restore the baby's digestive function, Zhu explained. 

Several other operations were required before the baby's legs were surgically separated, Zhu said. "The operations will be complicated and risky but we'll try our best." The hospital is taking responsibility for treatment costs.

The baby's parents have not made themselves known.

(Xinhua News Agency November 23, 2006)