A team of medical experts at the University of Ilorin Teaching Hospital (UITH) in Kwara State have successfully separated a set of conjoined female twins.

Naija News reports that the twin girls were separated by a 66-member all-Nigerian team of pediatric surgeons, pediatricians, pediatric cardiologists, anesthetists, cardiothoracic surgeons, nurses, pharmacists, behavioral scientists among others.

Addressing reporters in Ilorin, Kwara State capital on Thursday, UITH Chief Medical Director (CMD), Prof Abdullahi Yussuf, said the successful separation was due to the dedication and determination of the medical team.

He said: “You are here to celebrate with us one of the milestones we achieved in the last few days. This was the separation of conjoined twins by this hospital. This was done by a team of experts in the hospital ably led by a pediatric surgeon.

“Today we are witnessing another breakthrough in this hospital and we are very grateful to God for making this possible. We are also grateful for those who have contributed so immensely to the success of the procedure. Especially by the Kwara State Governor AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq. The governor supported the procedure by giving us a substantial amount of money and that actually propelled us to be able to achieve the feat.

He said: “They came here at about 12 hours of age following an emergency caesarian section delivery at New Bussa, Niger State. We thank God that we have been able to go through several sessions of care in getting to this stage.

“However, the conjoined twin management team actually had challenges in caring for these babies; we thank God that we overcame all and we are presenting healthy babies to you here today.

“In the history of this hospital, this is the third set of conjoined twins between 2005 and now. The 2005 conjoined twins were lost after the fifth day of admission because one of them became compromised and they had an emergency separation but they did not make it. In 2016 another set also had an emergency separation after about the 10th day on admission but they did not survive. But we thank God that this set has overcome all the challenges and are doing well today.

“The peculiar problems we have ever experienced at this centre and many other institutions are that we don’t have the facilities to manage them. Not the manpower. We don’t have equipment. We don’t have basic things in the neonatal care unit. We adapt adult equipment to manage children and that has been a great challenge.

“In fact, in putting up the team for the separation we had everybody. We had 16 multidisciplinary groups working together to make 66 members.

“When they came initially we had the problem of even investigating them to know where they are joined. We only managed and they remained stable in spite of many challenges because we were not able to do the basic minimum to help them out. Please help us to help more babies.

“It is not these babies, we have many other children coming with congenital anomalies and many other problems that need these facilities we are lacking to thrive.”