Little Peruvian Mermaid turns Six On 27th April 2010



Little Peruvian Mermaid turns Six On 27th April 2010




Six-year-old Peruvian girl Milagros Cerron blows out her birthday candle flanked by Lima Mayor Luis Castaneda (L) and her doctor, Luis Rubio, during her birthday ceremony at Lima's City Hall, April 27, 2010. Milagros Cerron, known as the 'Little Mermaid' because of a rare birth defect in which her legs are joined together, is making good progress after being operated three times in the last five years in Peru, doctor Rubio said.











Mermaid syndrome or sirenomelia mermaid syndrome is a deadly birth defect in which the two lower limbs of the newborn are attached or fused together as one like in a mermaid.


Facts about Sirenomelia:

* Mermaid syndrome is also known as sirenomelia, as mentioned earlier.

* Mermaid syndrome is such a rare birth defect that only one in every 70,000 births is known to have it.

* When a baby is born with mermaid syndrome, it is very very lucky, for the one fact that there are only over 300 reported live births of such babies.

* More often than not, mermaid syndrome proves fatal for the baby. In fact, very few survive it even after surgery.

* Half the mermaid syndrome cases are usually seen as stillbirths, while it is hundred times more likely to occur in identical twins.

* This disorder was initially mistaken with Caudal Regression Syndrome, but was later reiterated as an independent sirenomelia mermaid syndrome.









































Mermaid Syndrome Survivor Facts


There are only two known survivors of mermaid syndrome, both of them girls. Mermaid syndrome girl Shiloh Pepin (born in 1999) recently died in October 2009, after defying her doctors, who claimed that she would not live past a few days from her birth. The girl lived to be ten years old and can be given the credit for spreading more mermaid syndrome facts and awareness by appearing on television shows like the Oprah Winfrey Show. Details on the two survivors are given below.


Tiffany Yorks is the oldest survivor of mermaid syndrome and was born with the defect in 1980. Unfortunately, she had more problems than just fused legs. She was born without a bladder which had to be surgically put in. She had about 5 surgeries before she was one, to separate her legs and correct her other internal problems. She has had many more surgeries all throughout her youth, for her mermaid syndrome has caused her many problems even after the ones she had corrected earlier.


Peru born Milagros Cerron was born in 2004 and is also a valiant survivor of the mermaid syndrome. She too had numerous other complication to go with her already severe mermaid syndrome. She was not only born with just one kidney, but it was later found that both her digestive tract and genitals were one single tube. Like the 'miracle' that her name means in Spanish, this girl born in a poor Spanish family received all her medical treatment at the expense of the Lima Government. This Spanish girl was left almost mute by the intense medical treatment that she went through, but she has today overcome that trauma too.

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