Doctors at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) were able to save a 10-day-old baby who was born with his heart outside his body. Only eight in one million babies are born with Ectopia Cordis, a very rare congenital anomaly in which the heart is outside the body, worldover.

Usually children with such condition are stillborn or survive for few hours but this baby managed to live 10 days without the surgery. The boy was born to Vibha Devi and her labourer husband from Parihar village of Sitamarhi district near Muzaffarpur on August 26. He was admitted to AIIMS on August 28.

It took three and half hours for the team of docters led by cardio- surgeon A. K. Bisoi, at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) to place boy’s heart at the right place. The docters placed the heart in a cavity created somewhere between the boy's chest and abdomen. The boy also suffered from septicemia, a potentially life- threatening infection in which bacteria enters the blood.

Dr Bisoi said: "Though the baby's condition is stable, he is in a significant and critical phase. The baby is under continuous observation. We have to see how he responds to the surgery."