Runa Begum, a young girl in India has an extreme case of hydrocephalus that her head has swelled to an alarming size.
Her mother, Fatima, told Reuters that cerebrospinal fluid has collected in her skull since she was born.
Doctors in the Tripura region, where the family lives, have been unable to provide relief. Runa’s father, Abdul Rehman, doesn’t earn enough as a brick factory worker to pay for more medical help.
Dr. Peter Heydemann, a pediatric neurologist at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago, suggested that the girl could be treated with a shunt inserted to drain the fluid, but he expressed doubt whether any brain damage could be reversed.
Heydemann suggested Runa might have hydranencephaly, in which the brain hemispheres are absent and the empty space is filled by cerebrospinal fluid.
Gill Yaz, a health official for Shine, a British charity for hydrocephalus victims, told the Daily Mail that the shunt procedure takes just 30 minutes and that the shunts themselves cost between $300 and $1,200. But Rehman makes just $2.75 a day.
Tags: born with hydrocephalus, head swells, like a balloon
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