Girl born with three legs ‘walks, runs’ after life-saving surgery

A toddler born with three legs - because body parts of a twin had grown inside her - who underwent life-saving complex and rare surgery at Melbourne’s Monash Children’s Hospital in Australia was returning home to Bangladesh Friday after enabled her to walk and run, her doctor said.
Three-year-old Choity Khatun was born with cordial twinning, where part of a twin develops in her perineum. She was given little prospect of survival until she was brought to Melbourne last year by Australian charity Children First Foundation.

She had part of her leg removed in a Bangladeshi hospital shortly after she was giving birth to, and years later made headlines after having the remainder of the leg removed from within the pelvis through surgery.

A team of surgeons spent several months to come up with a solution mapping out a procedure to reconstruct her anatomy.

The head of surgery and associate professor Chris Kimber from the Monash Children’s Hospital said “She’s now able to walk and run and go to the toilet – and this is going to make a big difference to her life back in Bangladesh.”

“Many of these children die in the womb, or soon after birth. When she presented to us, she had a large part of her leg leftover, and most of her internal organs were either doubled, or in abnormal places.”

“Everything is good now…She can play like every baby,” she said.