Nagpur: A baby girl born with no external skin as a result of a severe congenital disorder died on Monday in Nagpur after struggling for her life for two days.
The baby girl weighing about 1.28kg was born with ‘Harlequin Ichtyosis’, a rare genetic mutation in which the baby's body was covered with thick plates of hardened, cracked skin and her internal organs visible.
The baby was born to a farmer-couple in Wadi, at the Lata Mangeshkar Hospital. She was in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) and was being attended to by a team of doctors.
The overall incidence of harlequin ichthyosis is 1 in 300,000 births.
Unfortunately, there is no cure for the disorder and constant care is required to moisturise and protect the skin.
Apart from this case in Maharashtra, there have only been around a dozen such recorded cases in medical history since 1750.
