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Ilorin Teaching Hospital separates conjoined twins
By Modupe Shodeinde
University of Ilorin Teaching Hospital (UITH) announced the successful separation of conjoined twins on Thursday.
The hospital carried out the successful separation despite the lack of adequate medical equipment.
UITH Chief Medical Director (CMD) Prof Abdaullah Yussuf attributed the feat to the doggedness and determination of the 66-membered team.
The medical director while addressing reporters at Ilorin, Kwara state said the feat was “one of the milestones we achieved in the last few days” and “another breakthrough in the hospital”
He said the separation was done by a team of experts in the hospital ably led by a pedantic surgeon.
He also thanked the Kwara state Governor AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq, for financially supporting the procedure.
Speaking on the dearth of equipments, he called for assistance of organizations and agencies.
“Everybody knows that government alone cannot handle healthcare alone. We need the assistance of philanthropists, donor agencies, international organizations and others. We recently got some equipment from government and donor agencies but they may not be enough for all challenges.” he said.
The team leader Prof Luqman Abdul-Rahman said “the twins before their separation were joined on the chest and abdomen at presentation. They came here at about 12 hours of age following an emergency caesarian section of 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 live 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 fifth day of admission because one of them got compromised and they had an emergency separation but they did not make it. In 2016 another set also had an emergency separation after about 10th day on admission but they did not survive. But we thank God that this set had survived all the rigours and are alive today.”
Abdul-Rahman decried the lack of essential facilities, manpower and equipment the hospital and many other institutions in the country suffers.
He called for the provision of adequate and essential facilities to care for children.
“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 survive.” he said.
