** ADVANCE FOR MONDAY, MAY 29 ** Damon Diamond, 2, of Bryant, Ark., is examined by Dr. Samiya Razzaq at an Arkansas Children's Hospital clinic Friday, May 26, 2006, in Little Rock, Ark. Two years after Arkansas instituted first-in-the-nation obesity testing for public school students, data shows that the percentage of overweight children remains the same, but at least it's not going up. (AP Photo/Danny Johnston) (AP)
A 10-month-old girl in Colombia is undergoing medical examinations after her weight ballooned from 6 pounds at birth to nearly 44 pounds today, metro.co.uk reported.
“When she was 15 days old, she was already looking chubby because she was born very thin. Since then, she’s been gaining weight,” her mother, Sandro Franco, of Libano, a town in the central-west region of Colombia, told metro.co.uk.
Neither Franco nor medical professionals are sure why the youngster, Juanita Valentina Hernandez, has been gaining weight so rapidly. Franco said she has not had the money to pay for the medical help to find out.
In December, Colombian charity Gorditos de Corazon— or “Chubby Hearts” in English— brought Hernandez to capital city Bogota, to treat her for morbid obesity.
Salvador Palacio Gonzalez, founder of the charity, said Hernandez is the third child he has seen in the last year that weighs 44 pounds or more. Through his organization, Gonzalez has committed to reducing childhood obesity.
“To all mothers that have babies like this, please take care of our children if we don’t want them to get sick,” he told metro.co.uk. “Please don’t let them die from one of these diseases.”
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