At first 500kg, heaviest woman now half her size

Egyptian patient loses 250kg after procedure in India

MUMBAI // The world’s heaviest woman has shed half her weight – 250 kilogrammes – in the two months she has been in India to undergo emergency weight loss surgery. Egyptian Eman Ahmed Abd El Aty weighed 500kg when she arrived in Mumbai in February on a modified plane.

In videos provided this week by the Saifee Hospital, where the 37- year- old had bariatric surgery last month, Ms Abd El Aty sits up smiling while listening to music.

“She looks a happier and slimmer version of her past self. She can finally fit into a wheelchair and sit for longer periods of time, something we never dreamt of three months ago,” said doctors.

Ms Abd El Aty had not left her home in Alexandria for two decades.

She was put on a liquid diet to get her weight down for doctors to perform a stomach-shrinking bariatric bypass procedure.

The diet helped Ms Abd El Aty lose about 100 kg in a month, allowing doctors to operate on her in March.

Ms Abd El Aty’s family said 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.

The Egyptian has suffered several strokes 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.

“She is awaiting the moment she can fit into a CT scan machine to know the cause of her right-sided paralysis and convulsions,” doctors said. Muffazal Lakdawala, the doctor leading Ms Abd El Aty’s treatment, said they hoped to put her on a trial obesity drug in six months.