Soroti doctors who separated conjoined twins are heros, says Kadaga

By Musasizi Isaac

The Speaker of Parliament Rebecca Kadaga has met the medical team of Soroti Referral Hospital who separated conjoined twins and named them as “heros”.

“They are heroes. The sixteen names will be forwarded to the National Awards Committee. They separated a set of conjoined twins who had been referred to but rejected by Mulago National Referral Hospital. To compound it, one of the twins was already dead,” Kadaga said after the meeting on Wednesday.

The operation lasted about five hours. It was led by the hospital’s lead surgeon Dr Joseph Epodoi. He is the man who also led the rest of the team to meet Kadaga at Parliament.

Speaker Kadaga in her speech said she was touched by their zeal to save lives.

“Among these professionals are six female doctors. Parliament will ensure that Soroti and other referral hospitals are given adequate financial resources so that patients don’t have to come to Kampala,” Kadaga said.

Also read: https://newsday.co.ug/soroti-medics-successfully-separate-conjoined-twins-ignored-at-mulago/

The twin-girls were delivered a fortnight ago at Amuria District Hospital to Joyce Alinga, a- 21- year- old of senior three who conceived during the COVID-19 lockdown. Alinga is a resident of Aujongor Village, Obalanga Sub County in Kapelebyong district.

But moments after the cesarean birth, one of the twins died while the other was alive, prompting medics in Amuria Hospital to refer the children to Soroti Regional Referral Hospital for possible detachment. The team in Soroti also referred the family to Mulago National Referral Hospital, where they arrived on Monday.

However, the family failed to secure an appointment with medics to carry out an operation on the children, forcing the family to return to Soroti Regional Referral Hospital on Wednesday. The living conjoined twin has been able to stay alive for six days while stuck to the other, dead baby.

Dr. Epodoi told our reporter that the conjoined twins shared the liver and chest walls, adding that by the time of the operation, the deceased twin had already started rotting.

Medical research shows that when the heart of one of the twins stops, they are likely to lose blood into the living twin and would need emergency care to save the living twin.

According to Dr. Epodoi, there are more than 80 percent chances for survival of the living child after the operation.

Dr. Epodoi explained that conjoined twins occur due to genetic abnormalities in the body system during child formation.

Conjoined twins is a rare condition characterized by fusion of separable or an inseparable part or parts of the body of genetically identical, monozygotic, monoamniotic and monochromic twins.

Separation surgeries usually take more than 10-hours and the survival of the living twins depends on their shared systems. But there is increasing fear of sepsis to occur, when the infection from the deceased twin overwhelms the living twin’s system, causing inflammation that leads to organ failure.

This is a second time for medics at Soroti Regional Referral Hospital to perform high risk surgeries. In June 2020, the hospital successfully delivered a mother whose baby was implanted on the liver.