ZAMBOANGA CITY, 4 November 2004 — A young woman gave birth to a baby girl, who had a pair of heads, two sets of arms and three little legs, but the infant died after one of the head was severed as a “quack” doctor forced it out of the mother’s womb on a remote southern Philippine, reports said yesterday.
A radio report from southeastern Mindanao said 25-year old woman Emily Gubat gave birth on Monday inside their thatched hut on a small farming village in nearby Norala town, South Cotabato province.
Gubat was shocked when she was told about her baby, said the radio report monitored late yesterday. It was not immediately known whether the baby was born prematurely.
The report said the baby’s head was detached from the body after a a traditional midwife forced out the infant from woman’s womb. The quack doctor, as traditional midwives are generlly called, had to pull out the severed head after she discovered that the baby had two.
One of the heads was a little bigger than the other and the baby had four arms on its side and three legs, one near the abdomen, said the report. Many pregnant women in remote areas in the Philippines still resort to quack doctors to help them give birth because of lack of government doctors and the high cost of hospital care.
Others, however, go to “quack doctors” for delivery because it has been part of an old Filipino tradition in the countryside.
