Girl Born With “Mermaid Legs” Now Needs Kidney Transplant

Milagros Cerron, a child from Peru known as the
“mermaid baby”, is in urgent need of a kidney
transplant.
Now eight years old, Milagros Cerron was dubbed
the “mermaid baby” because her fused legs
resembled the tail of a fish.
In 2005, when Milagros, whose name means
miracles in Spanish, was nine-months-old, doctors
began the first of three operations to separate her
legs.
Seven-year-old Milagros survived sirenomelia, or mermaid
syndrome — a rare, usually lethal conprivate part
malformation that fused her legs – but now needs
surgery to reconstruct her urinary tract. The defect
occurs in one out of every 70,000 pregnancies and
there are only a three known cases of children with
the condition alive in the world. Sironemelia is
associated with kidney failure and gastrointestinal
defects.