Dhaka, Mar 28 (IANS): A 20-year-old Bangladeshi woman has given birth to twins nearly a month after delivering a baby, media reported on Thursday. All three newborns are alive and healthy.

Arifa Sultana gave birth to a premature baby boy in February but just 26 days later she complained of abdominal pains and was rushed to a hospital on March 21 when she delivered twins, the BBC quoted Sheila Poddar, the gynaecologist who performed the caesarean, as saying.

Her twins were found to be healthy and were discharged with no complications.

Sultana's case is one of "uterus didelphys", which means she has two separate uteruses.

"When the patient came in, we performed an ultrasound and found there were twin babies... We were both shocked and surprised. I have never observed something like this before," Poddar said.

According to Poddar, Sultana and her husband are "very poor" and she had "never had an ultrasound before" in the run up to her first delivery and hence "had no idea that she was carrying two more babies".

"We carried out a caesarean and she delivered twins, a male and a female. The babies and mother are all healthy," the doctor said, adding they were discharged on March 25.

According to Christopher Ng of the GynaeMD Clinic in Singapore, uterus didelphys -- the condition of having two uteruses -- is "not as rare as people think".

"If you go for a scan beforehand it would be very obvious to see two sets of uteruses," Ng told the BBC.

"It's likely that three eggs ovulated and were fertilised at the same time during her fertile period which resulted in three embryos," he added.