MUMBAI: An Egyptian woman widely believed to have been the world’s heaviest woman left an Indian hospital on Thursday more than 300 kg lighter for further treatment in Abu Dhabi.
Eman Ahmed, who weighed more than half a metric tonne (1,100 lb) when she was operated on in March, has not walked for 25 years. She is in her mid-30s.
A series of operations in Mumbai brought her weight down to below 200 kg (440 lb), her doctor, Muffazal Lakdawala, wrote in a blog post. But she would need further surgery to walk again, he said.
Lakdawala wrote on Wednesday that he had promised Eman “a healthier life and weight loss” which he had achieved.
“Her bone structure is poor,” Lakdawala wrote. “So many years of disuse have compounded the problem. She will need multiple surgeries to straighten her hips and knees.”
Eman was put on a special liquid diet in India to reduce her weight enough so that doctors could perform bariatric surgery.
The stomach-shrinking bypass procedure is increasingly common in India, which has a growing problem with obesity, particularly in urban areas.
She had not left her home in Egypt’s Mediterranean port city of Alexandria for two decades until she arrived in India on a specially-modified Airbus plane in February.
Her family told doctors that as a child she was diagnosed with elephantiasis, a condition that causes the limbs and other body parts to swell, leaving her almost immobile.
Eman has suffered a stroke and faced a series of other serious ailments owing to her weight including diabetes, high blood pressure, hypertension and sleep deprivation.
She is unable to speak properly and is partially paralysed.
— Agencies
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