Badaru Mannir (left) holds his daughter Hassana Badaru while Hussaina Badaru is held by her mother Malama Badariyya Badaru, after a surgery to separate the conjoined twins at BLK Super Speciality Hospital in New Delhi yesterday.
NEW DELHI: Doctors declared yesterday that a pair of formerly conjoined twins were healthy and happy after they were successfully separated in a marathon “nerve-wracking” operation in India by a team of 40 specialists.
The one-year-old girls from Nigeria, sporting matching bright pink dresses, sat patiently on their parents’ laps as doctors explained the separation last month during an 18-hour operation at a New Delhi hospital. “They were fused at their back when they came to us which is very rare,” paediatric surgeon Prashant Jain said.
“Usually the twins are joined in the head or the upper body. It posed a huge challenge to our team of doctors,” Jain said.
Doctors held the media conference as the twins, Hussaina and Hassana, sat happily, grabbing at a mobile phone, clutching a rattle and trying to pull off their mother’s earrings. Malama Badariyya Badaru, the mother of the twins, said she was overjoyed at finally being able to hold the girls in her arms “individually”.
The girls, sporting hair bands of different colours to make recognition easier, looked curiously at the cameras during the conference at the BLK Super Speciality hospital. “It was all nerve-wracking work. But it feels great to see them happy, healthy and independent,” Jain said.
The single surgery was carried out in three stages, preparation, separation and then reconstruction of their shared organs which include the lower spine, lower intestinal and urinary tracts as well as genitals.
“We carried out rehearsals using dummies. All tubes, wires, injections and drugs were colour-coded in pink or blue (for each girl) to avoid any mistake,” he said.
AFP
