Health

Jubilation as UITH records successful operations on conjoined twins

Published

6 years ago

January 16, 2021

The University of Ilorin Teaching Hospital (UITH) recorded the eartwarming news of asuccessful separation of conjoined female twins.

The 1st time UITH attempted a separation of conjoined twins, fifteen years ago, the babies sadly died, after 14 hours. As such it’s been a cheering moment for the institution and Nigerians are glad to see that UITH haven’t given up, and that the ‘class of 2020’ are alive and doing well.

On November 2019, another set of conjoined twins, girls, joined in the chest & stomach, were successfully separated, this time at the National Hospital Abuja.

On August 2020, Federal Medical Center Yola successfully separated another set of conjoined twin girls. The Nigeria AirForce helped fly the parents and twins from Yenagoa where they were born to Yola where the surgery was done. FMC Yola building a reputation for excellence in this area.

All the 3 sets of conjoined twins in this story have been girls. Why’s that?

According to a research paper from 2001, girls are more than 5 times more likely to be born conjoined, than boys.

And this theory to why this is so is based on the possibility “that male conjoined twins lack the staying power of female ones and therefore don’t survive to even be born. (No doubt all the girls in this story are fighters!).”