Doctors removed a live 5-centimeter leech from the windpipe of a 7-year-old girl, yunnan.cn reported on Thursday.

The girl from the city of Zhaotong in Southwest China's Yunnan Province was recovering after being rushed by her parents to Kunming Children's Hospital on Monday having difficulty breathing, a doctor told the provincial news portal.

They usually drink water straight from the tap, her parents admitted.

Their daughter had been suffering throat pain for more than two months.

"We thought she might have caught a cold," the mother told the website, "but never thought it was a leech or it could stay there so long."

The girl must have suffered as leeches grow larger by sucking on blood, a doctor told the portal.

Nobody was fully named in the article.

yunnan.cn