Doing ‘normal’, split twins to get released Sunday

The conjoined twin babies of Gaibandha are ready for release from hospital as doctors believe they are developing normally after a major splitting operation.

Tofa and Tohura are currently out of danger, Associate Professor Shahnoor Islam of Dhaka Medical College Hospital told The Daily Star. “We hope they will do fine.”

Hospital authorities will release them on Sunday, after a scheduled visit of Health Minister Mohammad Nasim to meet the twin girls, currently just over 10 months old.

The babies, who were joined from waist down since birth, will undergo some more operations to fix their rectum lining and reproductive organs in the future.

“Currently, we have asked the parents for a monthly follow-up. The future operations will be based on their physical condition,” Prof Shahnoor Islam said.

EATING NORMAL, BEING TRAINED TO SIT UP

Doctors are training the babies every day to sit upright and crawl. They say the learning curve of the babies will take time as they were habituated to learn in a conjoined state.

“We are training the girls to crawl and sit upright gently,” said Prof Shahnoor. “It will take time for them to learn, but we hope they will have no problem.”

The twin’s mother Shahida Begum told The Daily Star that her babies can lean sides slightly and that the doctors have taught her about how she will train them at home.

She said her babies were eating normal food and that their weights improved – six kilogrammes lately measured last month. Apparently, they were healthy babies.

Now after release, the parents will take them home and follow up with doctors at Dhaka Medical College Hospital every month and wait for the next operation.