NOIDA (INDIA) - THE parents of an Indian girl born with two faces say she is eating and breathing normally despite having two pairs of eyes and lips and two noses.
The baby, who is yet to be named, was born to factory worker Vinod Kumar and his wife Sushma three weeks ago in northern India and has been drawing a stream of curious observers and others who consider her a deity in this deeply religious Hindu-majority country.
'I had never seen something like this in my life, so naturally I was a little scared when I first saw her,' her father said at the weekend at the family's mud-and-brick house in Noida town, about 50km north-east of New Delhi.
The baby has found easy acceptance in Kumar's large extended family, who say they have no plans to consult doctors to check if she can receive treatment or corrective surgery.
'The doctor said everything is normal when she was born. So where's the need to get medical help?' said her father.
'She's fed through one mouth and sucks her thumb with the other. We use whichever mouth is free to feed her,' said the 24-year-old Kumar.
'Whatever God has given me is acceptable. What can we do about it?' he said.
'This child is very special to us,' the baby's grandfather chimed in, gazing lovingly at the infant.
Doctors said it was an extremely rare case, with the girl having two skulls joined together, and that separating them was out of the question.
'Since the heads are fused, separating them is not possible,' paediatrician D.K Gupta of the All India Institute of Medical Sciences told the Hindustan Times newspaper.
But doctors said the girl should be examined thoroughly to study the possibility of complications.
'Clearly the child is in no immediate danger but it has to be checked whether the oral and nasal cavity and other passages' are functioning properly, Dr Gupta said.
