In an extremely rare case, a woman in India has given birth to a boy with two heads and three hands in a village in the Vidisha district of Madhya Pradesh state on Sunday.
The doctors at the district hospital reportedly said that only one heart was visible during an ultrasound of the newborn. However, media reports state that her husband said that in a sonography performed two months ago, the couple was told that there would be twins.
The baby, which was born to a 21-year-old resident of the Ganjbasoda area, is currently undergoing intensive treatment in the hospital’s Intensive Care Unit.
The last such case was reported from the western state of Rajashtan in 2016, when two-headed boy weighing 2.5 kg (5 lbs., 7 oz.), was born healthy but died within 32 hours of his birth.
The National Health Portal of India says on its website that the prevalence of birth defects in India is 6-7%, which translates to around 1.7 million birth defects annually.
The most common birth defects include congenital heart disease (8-10 per 1,000 live births), congenital deafness (5.6-10 per 1,000 live births), and neural tube defects (4-11.4 per 1,000 live births) according to a 2006 March of Dimes report.