19-Year-Old Indian teenager Trapped in the body of a toddler

Ajifa looks like a toddler, she is in fact 19, having stopped growing just before her second birthday and must be carried everywhere by her mother Apila, 42

The teenager was a healthy baby when she was born in 1994 and it wasn't long before she started to walk and talk.

However, her development then stalled.

Doctors initially told her mother and father, Sekh, 52, that Ajifa would start growing again.

They then blamed cancer for her condition, before suggesting that it could be a hormone disorder and the family are still at a loss as to why Ajifa is how she is.

Scientists believe that Ajifa could have Laron Syndrome, a rare genetic condition, which is believed to have affected just 300 people across the globe - with a third of them living in in remote villages in Ecuador’s southern Loja province.

People living with Laron lack a hormone called Insulin-like Growth Factor 1, or IGF-1, which stimulates the cell to grow and divide to form new cells.