08.04.08 - Strange, sad and terrible things happening in other countries

3 News on this Nice Tuesday morning made mummy upset today ! :(

1. News on 8 limbs Lakshmi.

She looks so cute and normal. Hopes all her operations turn out well! :)



Girl With 8 Limbs - Lakshmi Tatma pictured below was born joined to a ‘parasitic twin’ and the 8-limbed baby is undergoing surgery today to remove four of her 8 limbs.

Complications for the girl born with 8 limbs are major: Lakshmi’s two spines are merged, she has four kidneys, entangled nerves, two stomach cavities and two chest cavities, plus she cannot stand up or walk because of the extra limbs.

Doctors are working to remove Lakshmi’s extra limbs and organs so she’ll have a normal anatomy, said Dr. Patil Mamatha of Sparsh Hospital in Bangalore India. There is a 25% chance the eight-limbed girl will not survive the 40-hour operation involving 30 surgeons working round the clock to save her.

The girl with eight limbs, Lakshmi, is named after the four-armed Hindu goddess of wealth, and some in her poor village in the northern state of Bihar revere her as a goddess.

Others sought to make money from her. Her parents, Shambhu and Poonam, hid her after a circus apparently tried to buy the girl, according to a report in the Hindustan Times.

“She’s a very cute girl,” Dr. Patil Mamatha said. “She’s very playful and gets along well with others.”

2. News on 2 faces baby.

Unbeleiveable but it's true! :(

NOIDA, India (AFP) - - The parents of an Indian infant girl born with two faces say that she is eating and breathing normally despite having two pairs of eyes and lips and two noses.

Sushma three weeks ago in northern India and has been drawing a stream of curious observers and others who consider her a deity in this deeply religious Hindu-majority country.

"I had never seen something like this in my life so naturally I was a little scared when I first saw her," her father said at the weekend at the family's mud-and-brick house in Noida town, about 50 kilometres (30 miles) northeast of New Delhi.

The girl has found easy acceptance in Kumar's large, extended family, who say they have no plans to consult doctors to check if the girl can receive treatment or corrective surgery.

"The doctor said everything is normal when she was born. So where's the need to get medical help?" said the child's father.

"She's fed through one mouth and sucks her thumb with the other. We use whichever mouth is free to feed her," the 24-year-old Kumar told AFP, adding she is eating and breathing normally.

Doctors said it was an extremely rare case, with the girl having two skulls joined together, and that separating them was out of the question.

"Since the heads are fused, separating them is not possible," paediatrician D.K Gupta of the All India Institute of Medical Sciences told the Hindustan Times newspaper on the weekend.

But doctors said the girl should be examined thoroughly to study the possibility of complications.

"Clearly the child is in no immediate danger but it has to be checked whether the oral and nasal cavity and other passages" are functioning properly, paediatrician Gupta said.

The case comes just months after Indian doctors performed a rare, marathon surgery to remove the extra limbs of a girl born with four arms and legs.

Two-year-old Lakshmi Tatma's case captivated the nation last year as domestic and international media focused on her complicated surgery performed in southern Bangalore city in November.

This year, Lakshmi started taking her first steps with the help of a baby walker, delighting her parents and doctors.

Lakshmi, named after the four-armed Hindu goddess of wealth, was born fused to the pelvis of a twin that had stopped developing in her mother's womb -- a condition that occurs once in 50,000 conjoined twin births.

Kumar said he had heard about Lakshmi, but did not want to change anything about his daughter's features.

"Whatever God has given me is acceptable. What can we do about it?" he said, lifting the baby to take her away after allowing a brief glimpse of her as neighbours crowded around her cot.

"This child is very special to us," the baby's grandfather chimed in, gazing lovingly at the infant.

3. News - German mother jailed for 15 years for killing 8 babies .

There are so many women out there dying to bring birth to a healthy baby and this mummy kills her own blood and flesh! :(

FRANKFURT AN DER ODER (Germany) - A GERMAN appeal court confirmed a 15-year prison sentence handed to a woman for killing eight of her newborn babies in the country's worst post-war infanticide case.

The court in Frankfurt an der Oder in eastern Germany on Monday found that the fact 42-year-old Sabine Hilschenz was an alcoholic did not reduce her accountability for the crime.

The divorced, unemployed dental assistant was found guilty of eight counts of manslaughter in 2006 for routinely killing her offspring.

Hilschenz had told investigators that she did not harm the children but left them to die after giving birth alone every time following heavy drinking.

The remains of the babies were found in buckets and flowerpots at the home she shared with her husband, and in an old fish tank at the home of her parents in the town of Brieskow-Finkenheerd in former communist east Germany.

Hilschenz gave birth to nine babies - two boys and seven girls - between 1988 and 1998.

She was also accused of killing the first of the nine babies, born in 1988, but the lower court ruled that the time in which she could be charged in connection with that death had lapsed.

Hilschenz divorced her husband, who was believed to have worked for the feared East German secret police, the Stasi, in 2005 after years of marital strife.

The couple have three surviving children and the court heard that he had not wanted any more.

He declined to testify in the trial, but a separate investigation has been launched into his role in the affair. -- AFP