Doctors at the Petlaburj Maternity Hospital in Hyderabad delivered a rare “mermaid baby” or a baby with the rare congenital condition called mermaid syndrome. However, the baby died within hours of being born.

A woman gave birth to a baby that appeared to have the shape of a mermaid. The infant was suffering from a rare congenital developmental disorder known as Sirenomelia or Mermaid Syndrome.

According to the hospital’s doctors, the baby died due to a critical medical condition within hours of being born. ‘The baby was born around 19:00 on Wednesday and died within the next two hours. “Such babies are extremely rare,” said hospital doctors. Doctors also said that it is possible that the defects were not detected before, which made the case more complex.

The Sirenomelia or Mermaid syndrome baby is born with a complete fusion of the bones, apart from the additional absence of genitals, gastrointestinal disorders, disorders in the spine, pelvis and even the absence of both kidneys.

According to the NCBI, this condition is usually deemed unfit or incompatible with life owing to several visceral abnormalities. However, a report indicates that there are actually a few surviving infants.

According to a PTI report, a baby was born in 2018 with the same condition at the Swami Ramanand Teerth Rural Government Hospital at Ambajogai in Maharashtra. Like the Hyderabad baby, the infant too died within just 15 minutes of being born. In 2017, a 23-year-old woman gave birth to a baby with its legs fused or the mermaid syndrome. The baby’s sex could not be identified owing to its fused limbs. It lived for four hours.

In 2019, a local news channel from Texas reported the story of a one-year-old baby who had been born with Sirenomelia and had survived. The child’s parents had been told that she would not survive the pregnancy owing to her defects. But she beat all odds, although she had a long road to recovery ahead of her. As per the news report, the child was to undergo a surgery to separate her fused legs.