Researchers have published a story in the Hong Kong Medical Journal this week, outlining the case of a newborn girl discovered to have two 8 to 10 week old fetuses in her womb.
The baby, born in November 2010, was originally thought by medical professionals to have two tumours in her abdomen.
The mass was extracted in a surgery carried out when the child was three weeks old, and was discovered to contain “two fetiform structures with spine and long bone formation”.
The condition, called fetus in fetu, is extremely rare – thought to occur in only 1 in 500,000 births worldwide.
Speaking to The South China Morning Post, a Dr Yu Kai-man, said: “It was almost impossible to detect during the prenatal check-up as the embryo inside the baby was too small.”
“Since it is impossible for the little girl to have conceived the pregnancy on her own, the fertilisation of the twin foetuses, of course, belongs to her parents, which has gone to the wrong place.”
