When doctors first saw four-day-old Santa Madalena Rebelo from East Timor, her belly was covered with glad wrap in an attempt to keep her intestines from spilling out of her body.
The girl was born with gastroschisis, a birth defect in which organs protrude from the body through a defect on one side of the umbilical cord.
GALLERY: More photos of Santa Madalena Rebelo after her life saving surgery
In Australia, more than 95per cent of babies born with gastroschisis survive, but in East Timor her mother, Maria Rebelo, was told nothing could be done and the baby was left to die.
Luckily, Australian paediatrician Ingrid Bucens was working in Dili.
She convinced the 33-year-old mother that treatment in Australia would save her daughter's life. Canberra Hospital agreed to treat the little girl under a partnership agreement with Rotary Oceanic Medical Aid for Children, which helps children from developing countries afflicted with severe medical conditions. Time was a critical factor, with the risk of infection growing every minute. Immigration officials rushed through a medical treatment visa within 24 hours, allowing mother and daughter to fly to Darwin and on to Canberra for the life-saving surgery.
Speaking through an interpreter to The Canberra Times, Mrs Rebelo said doctors in Dili refused to treat her baby.
''They couldn't do the operation because they said the baby won't live for more than four days and also the equipment and everything is not good at Dili Hospital,'' Mrs Rebelo said.
But later that day Dr Bucens saw the baby and contacted ROMAC.
''Dr Ingrid told me, 'You have to trust me and listen to me. If the baby comes with me she gets better'.''
Santa arrived at Canberra Hospital four days after she was born - but she was dying.
Australian National University medical school Associate Professor of paediatric surgery David Croaker said more than 100cm of the little girls' intestines and one ovary were outside the abdominal cavity.
''The only complication is that in the Third World this is regarded as a fatal illness and a lot of these children are put in the corner and allowed to die - I spoke to the surgeons in Timor on the phone at that was their attitude,'' Dr Croaker said.
''They should have got a sterile saline bag, cut the top off and sewed it onto her skin and that would have been pretty close to what we did when she got here. And then you can gradually squeeze the bowel back in over a few days.''
Complications brought about by a lack of medical care in East Timor will keep the little girl in hospital in Canberra, but she is expected to make a full recovery from her medical problems.
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