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.

She is presently eight years old, Milagros Cerron was named 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.

Eight-year-old Milagros survived sirenomelia, or mermaid syndrome — a rare, usually lethal congenital 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.