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UAE prince offers to help Indian conjoined twins

September 08, 2005 18:02 IST
Abu Dhabi's crown prince has offered to pay for surgery to separate a pair of Indian conjoined twins who are connected at their heads, officials said on Thursday, as doctors explored whether such an operation was possible.

Crown Prince Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan found out about the 10-year-old girls from newspaper reports and decided to help them, said Nawab Warsi, a spokesman for the United Arab Emirates' embassy in New Delhi.

The twins, Farah and Sarah, are joined at the head but can walk around, said Anupam Sibal, a doctor at New Delhi's Apollo Hospital where the girls are currently admitted, as physicians try to figure out if they can be separated.

"We have conducted a lot of tests and are presently assessing whether a separation of their heads is possible or not," Sibal told The Associated Press.

He said doctors in India were consulting physicians in the United States and Singapore who have separated conjoined twins in the past.

The twins, from Bihar, come from a poor family that can't afford the expensive surgery, which can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Sibal refused to say precisely how much the surgery would cost. "This is not something which happens frequently."

Attempts to separate conjoined twins in Singapore have met with varied results in recent years.

Two years ago, doctors successfully separated a pair of Korean twins fused at the spine. But two weeks later, Iranian adult twins Ladan and Laleh Bijani - joined at the head - died due to massive blood losses during an operation to separate them.

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