A
woman believed to be the world’s fattest at 78 stone woman is leaving
her home for the first time in 25 years to have life-saving weight
reduction surgery.
Iman Ahmad Abdulati, 26 – who tips the scales at over
half a tonne (over 78.7 stone) – is to fly to India from her home in
Alexandria, Egypt, after one of the world’s leading bariatric surgeons
volunteered to treat her.
Indian law requires visa applicants allow immigration police to take their fingerprints.
However, the medic is struggling with the mammoth problem of getting Iman to Mumbai this week for a series of ops that could last a year. He 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.
The plane will have to be refitted with a reinforced bed because Iman’s weight makes it impossible for her to sit upright in a chair.
Her family says she was born weighing five kilogrammes (11 lbs) and diagnosed with elephantiasis – a parasitic infection that causes extreme swelling in a sufferer’s limbs and arms.
A cerebral stroke aged 11 left her bedridden. And – unable to support her ballooning weight – Iman became a prisoner in her own home where her weight continued to grow massively.