KARACHI, Feb 27: It was a moment of relief for the parents of a nine-month-old baby, Sonia, having some extra rudimentary limbs, when doctors at the National Institute of Child Health, Karachi, decided to treat her.

The baby, eighth in number to 50-year-old Mohammad Ashiq of Bahawalpur, has some additional limb-growths in her lower back, which are gradually expanding. Sonia is unaware of the problem, but her parents have been in agony since her birth.

Ashiq, a construction worker from a katchi abadi near the Bahawalpur railway station, says he did not know what to do after spending a lot of hard-earned and borrowed money on the birth of the baby at a private hospital.

“The lady doctor told me that the additional growth to our newborn girl’s body could be removed if we paid Rs200,000 to doctors for surgery and other procedures. My neighbours, considering my financial conditions, suggested that I sell the baby to circus people, who haunted me and offered payment for the baby to raise her with the physical deformities and use her as a ‘freak object’ in fairs,” he said.

Baby’s uncle Safdar Jafery said he was really distressed when he visited his sister and brother-in-law’s family at Bahawalpur and found them in a pathetic condition. “Now for the last about 40 days they are with me at Anwar Shah Goth, near Nusrat Bhutto Colony, North Karachi,” he said, adding that the baby was shown to some doctors at a private medical university hospital about a month back. They conducted a couple of expensive tests. “We exhausted the money we had received from welfare organisations, but there was no final say in the matter as the relevant surgeon was abroad,” Mr Jafery said, adding that “it was a media person who suggested that we take the baby to the NICH.”

The baby has the history of fits and fever. Prof Farhat Mirza, a senior surgeon looking over the case, has admitted Sonia to A Ward of the institute and also ordered some tests, said Mr Ashiq.

Prof Abdul Ghaffar Nagi, director of the NICH, said the baby was brought to the institute on Tuesday and after some initial inspection it was decided that she should be admitted immediately for further investigations.

“Obviously the child is behaving well, but there was also a need to know whether the two rudimentary legs and buttock of her incompletely developed co-twin attached to her back have any extension in the spinal cord of the baby,” he said.

Tests would surely help decide the mode of surgery. In case of complications, at least the rudiments developed would be removed in the first procedure, Dr Nagi said, adding: “If there are no inner complications, she would be treated to live a normal life.”

Prof Nagi said such a development was the result of a condition when two foetuses failed to develop separately in their mother’s womb.

At times doctors discover such parasitic rudiments during surgery of swelled abdomen of a child, he said and added that it was a rare case and he had seen this for the first time.