One year after the birth of conjoined twins who were initially born as triplets, a United Arab Emirates Hospital has offered to separate them free of charge.
The development is coming after the babies’ parents were said to have lost hope considering the amount initially involved in carrying out the medical exercise.
According to Daily Trust Report, when the babies father, Malam Hassan Isa left his home at Gangara community in Giwa LGA of Kaduna State in the morning sometime in early January, 2022, he didn’t envisage that his pregnant wife, Suwaiba, would deliver triplets.
A medical scan months earlier revealed that Suwaiba was pregnant with twins. It was her eighth pregnancy, and her husband, a twin himself, said he was elated.
However, when his sister-in-law approached him at the village square later that morning to announce that his wife had delivered, Isa said a sense of foreboding descended on him.
Isa told Daily Trust on Sunday that he rushed home and discovered that several villagers had converged outside his home.
He said, “When I saw that my wife had delivered triplets, not twins, I felt a sense of relief and gratitude to Allah, not minding that two of the girls were joined together. It is a miracle that is left for only Allah.”
The wife, Suwaiba recalled in a telephone conversation that, “It was a simple delivery.”
The 33-year-old mother explained that the labour pains started around 5am when she woke up to ease herself and say her early morning prayers. She said she had prepared to welcome a set of twins, but that instead a set of female conjoined twins popped out.
She said alone in her room, “I saw them, and honestly I was not afraid and not even worried. I am a believer. A few seconds later, I felt my abdomen move again and I thought the placenta was about to come out, but it was another girl; I had delivered triplets.”
The couple revealed that they were persuaded to leave their home on the fringes of Kaduna, near Funtua in Katsina State for the Ahmadu Bello University Teaching Hospital (ABUTH), Zaria.
Hassana and Hussaina’s triplet sister, Hauwa, has been medically certified healthy. The triplets spent almost nine months at ABUTH where they underwent nutritional rehabilitation and some investigations with the help of Global Initiative for Peace, Love and Care (GIPLC); an NGO which caters for vulnerable children and women.
The family were moved to the University of Abuja Teaching Hospital (UATH), Gwagwalada, where they are presently being observed.
With a reputation for successful separation of conjoined twins, UATH in 2018 separated a set of conjoined twins who shared a single liver.
However, the National Coordinator of GIPLC, Nuhu Fulani Kwajafa, told Daily Trust on Sunday that the case of the Isa conjoined twins, Hassana and Hussaina, was more complicated.
Shedding more light on the issue, a consultant paediatric surgeon at ABUTH, told our correspondent that Hassana and Hussaina had a condition called omphalo-ischiopagus tetrapod; which means they are joined in the abdomen and in the pelvis and have four legs.
He explained that so far no case as complicated as theirs had survived separation in Nigeria, even though he noted that their chance of survival if separated overseas was between 70 and 80 per cent.
He said they had reached the perfect time for separation, as separation should be done usually between nine and 12 months for complex cases.
“This is for them to be able to develop like other children. By this time, you expect a child to be able to start sitting down, crawling and walking. You also need that period for two things: for them to grow well so that their tissues can be well separated. Secondly, to buy time for all the investigations you need to do so that when you are going in for surgery you know that this is what you are going in to treat.”
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