India's first ovarian transplant

Doctors at a hospital in Bombay have announced that they've carried out India's first ovarian transplant - in which healthy ovaries from one woman are donated to another.

The surgeon who carried out the operation Dr Pravin Mhatre said the patient, a seventeen-year-old girl, was doing fine and that the transplanted ovary was already producing hormones, and would soon produce eggs.

The patient -- who was suffering from Turner's syndrome, a rare chromosomal aberration -- will now be able to develop adult female characteristics, and should be able to have children.

She received a healthy ovary donated by a twenty-six year old cousin who already has two children. The state health minister, Digvijay Khanvilkar, said the operation raised the prospect of women with non-working ovaries being able to lead what he called normal lives.

The world's first such ovarian transplant is reported to have been carried out in China about a month before the Indian operation.

From the newsroom of the BBC World Service