The 11-month-old conjoined sisters, who were born joined at the chest, have been successfully separated after a 12-hour-long operation at a missionary hospital in India.
A team of 23 doctors and 11 nurses from India and Australia separated the twin sisters after a rigorous 12-hour-long operation at the Padhar Hospital in Madhya Pradesh, India, Daily Mail reported.
The twin sisters, Aradhana and Stuti were born to a poor farmer in an Indian district on July 12, last year by an emergency caesarean section in the same hospital. The girls were born underweight, weighing only 2.8 kgs.
Soon after the birth, their parents left the girls in the hospital as they were unable to take care of them and since then they have been taken care by the hospital authorities. Special nurses were allotted to take care of the girls.
Surgeons had to separate them from chest, abdomen, even hearts, membrane and the liver in order to successfully separate the two individuals.
Now that the pair is healthy and separated, after proper counseling by hospital authorities, the parents of little girls have agreed to take their daughters home and take care of them.
"We are happy that they will finally get to be a family and both the girls will get a proper home," Vikas Sonwani, assistant administrator of Paddar Hospital, told Daily Mail.
The hospital Superintendent Dr Rajiv Choudhry told the daily that the girls are being kept under ventilators and are likely to be discharged after 48 hours of close observation.
Since it was a high-risk surgery, the authorities at Padhar Hospital were trying to get international support from experts in Australia and Germany for the past one year.
According to the hospital's website, the surgery was made possible by the support of thousands of donors and contribution by state government for the operation.
