00:16 COMM: At just 18 months old, Aliya Saleem
weighs an incredible 53lbs or 24kgs. The same as an average seven year old. Her continuing
weight gain is still baffling local doctors and her parents have good reason to be concerned
for her health.
00:36 MOTHER: I had one daughter, Simran. She was
1 ½ years old. Her weight was around 24 kg. While eating, one day her vein's nerve burst
and she died.
00:55 COMM: Aliya was born a normal weight but around
three months old, her size started to increase rapidly. By the time she reached ten months
old, she weighed 41lbs, over 18 kgs.
01:09 COMM: Now 18 months old, her weight is still
increasing and she’s now reached to staggering 53lbs.
01:16 FATHER: The girl is suffering from a disease
and I am running around for her treatment. I am unable to do anything. I belong to a
very poor family.
01:30 COMM: Also affecting the family’s finances
is buying Aliya new clothes every two weeks as she grows out of them so quickly, plus
the amount of food she eats.
01:40 MOTHER: She wakes up in the morning and eats
some roti, tea, eats biscuits, papad and cakes. At 12pm she eats dal rice and she sleeps after
having a meal in the evening as well. She drinks milk too. She'll eat everything you
give to her. She eats everything. She eats, she eats everything.
02:00 COMM: Unlike other children her age, she’s
barely able to move around.
02:04 MOTHER: All the girls of her age group have
started walking or crawling but she stays sitting in one place. She wants to walk and
play and cries seeing the other kids. She asks me to pick her up and take her for a
walk. But I am unable to pick her up. So for the entire day, I keep on sitting with her
in the room itself.
02:23 COMM: After the death of their daughter Simran,
at the same age and weight as Aliya, Shabana and Mohammad are understandably worried but
their attempts to find her medical treatment have so far been unsuccessful.
02:36 FATHER: We have a fear in our hearts because
we’ve already lost a daughter, and hope nothing happens to the other daughter. That
is why there is a lot of tension. We took her to Ranchi a few times but the doctors
asked us to take her abroad. We didn’t have enough money, so that’s why we couldn’t
take her abroad. We consulted a homeopathic doctor once. They gave medication, but they
did not make any difference. Every month her weight continues to increase.
03:09 COMM: Today, they’re visiting a paediatrician
who they hope might be able to help them.
03:16 DOCTOR: She has been gaining weight drastically
since the age of three months. There could be multiple causes behind that. There could
be some hormonal imbalance; there could be some metabolic disease. There can be some
genetic causes, it could be because of some tumor but because there’s a history of sibling
loss with a similar complaint, I strongly suspect that this could be a case of some
genetic disorder. Most probably, Prader-Willi syndrome which is a very very rare disorder.
03:44 COMM: But for him to be certain, Aliya will
need to undergo a lot of tests.
03:48 DOCTOR: We would like to get her hormones
level checked. We would like to get her organ function test done. We would like her to screen
for diabetes, a thyroid function test, her cortisols level need to be done. We would
do MRI scan to see her hypothalamus or ultra sound to see her adrenals and apart from that
an x-ray to see her bone age and definitely a karotyping that would rule out any genetic
causes. And after doing all those things, we would be, probably be able to make diagnosis
and we can take it further from there.