| 500kg Egyptian woman. |
A woman thought to be the world’s fattest has left her home for the first time in 25 years for life saving surgery.
Iman Ahmad Abdulati was lifted out of her bed by CRANE and put on a CARGO PLANE for the journey from her Eygpt home to India.
One of the world’s leading bariatric surgeons has volunteered to treat her after an appeal from her family for help.
The 36-year-old, who tips the scales at almost 79 stone (500kg), was set to undergo a series of operations to reduce her weight.
She has been unable to leave her home in Alexandria for a quarter of a century – or get out of bed. A wall of her room had to be brought down to get the crane into the house
Iman’s op was almost grounded before it began after immigration officials at India’s embassy in Cairo refused to believe she was too big to visit to make her visa application.
Indian law requires visa applicants allow immigration police to take their fingerprints.
They only backed down when surgeon Dr Muffazzal Lakdawala used Twitter to contact India’s External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj to ask for help.
Iman could not travel in a normal plane due to her size and her bed needed to be reinforced because her weight makes it impossible for her to sit upright in a chair.
| World Fattest woman being Lifted from her bed by crane to travel in a cargo plane to India for Surgery. |
At home, she relies on her mother and sister Chaymaa Abdulati to help her with everyday tasks like eating, getting dressed, washing and going to the bathroom.
After a seven-hour long flight, she was placed in a mini truck at Chhatrapati Shivaji International airport and transported to Saifee Hospital in Mumbai.
She was accompanied with her sister Shaimaa Ahmed and a team of doctors from the hospital.
“She, along with her sister Shaimaa Ahmed, arrived in Mumbai at around 4 am. To prepare her for the flight, the team of doctors were in Egypt for the last 10 days to optimise the conditions for her travel,” a hospital official said.
“Given the fact that she is so heavy and not moved for the last 25 years she is at a high risk for a pulmonary embolism and hence has been put on blood thinners to try and minimise the chances of such an eventuality during her transfer.”
Iman was born weighing just under a stone and diagnosed with elephantiasis, a parasitic infection that causes extreme swelling in a person’s limbs and arms.
By the time she turned 11, she was too heavy to support her weight standing up, and resorted to crawling in the house on her knees.
Around the same time she dropped out of primary school, tragically suffering a cerebral stroke which left her bedridden and exacerbated her conditions and since remained in her room.
She has suffered paralysis in right leg and right arm which has left her completely immobile even in her bed. Dr Muffazzal Lakdawala told local media he plans to – at first – use a bariatric balloon to fill up part of Iman’s digestive tract.
The doctor reckons she could lose as much as 62 stone in two years.