A girl with her heart growing outside her chest was born after a surgical operation at the general hospital of central Quang Ngai province.

The baby, who weighed 3kg at birth, has been placed in an incubator and breast-fed. By the afternoon of March 24, she was in good health.

Doctor Tran Ba Tinh, head of the hospital's obstetrics department, warned that the girl, whose mother is Le Thi Dao from Nghia Phuong commune in Tu Nghia district, should be sent to Hanoi or Ho Chi Minh City soon for operations to correct the problem.

Doctor Tinh revealed that this was the first baby with an out-of-chest heart born at the hospital. The disease is extremely rare, occurring in one birth out of approximately 100,000.