TEEN GIVES BIRTH TO CONJOINED TWINS

A picture showing twins joined at the abdomen. These are not the twins who were born in the country.

MBABANE – The new year has come with a shocking surprise for a teenage mother who gave birth to conjoined twins.

The babies are joined at the abdomen and are females.
The 19-year-old gave birth to the rare twins on Tuesday at the Good Shepherd Hospital in Siteki, but both mother and children have been moved to the Mbabane Government Hospital.
Conjoined twins are identical twins joined in the utero and this is an extremely rare phenomenon and its occurrence is estimated from one to 49 000 births with a higher incidence in Africa and South East Asia.

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According to highly reliable sources, after the discovery of the birth, doctors and specialists were called to assess the situation and the twins were transferred to the neonatal ward at the new Mbabane Government Hospital Maternity Unit.
The children both have two legs each and arms and they are feeding independently from feeding bottles.
It is unknown whether the children will be able to be separated as several tests have to be conducted by specialists to ascertain whether they do not share major organs such as the lungs.
Sources revealed that this was the teen mother’s third birth.

The twins are reported to have weighed around 4.8 kg.
Contacted for comment, the Minister of Health Sibongile Simelane, confirmed that this rare incident had occurred in the country.
She said a team from the ministry, officers from the World Health Organisation (WHO), United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), senior medical officers and the Principal Secretary in the ministry, Dr Simon Zwane, had already paid a visit to the hospital.

“We are still to compile a report and clearly we will engage specialists from South Africa who have dealt with such cases,” said the minister.
The minister said if all was okay after tests, they would probably send the children for operation in South Africa through the Phalala Fund.
It is believed that the children could have shared the same placenta yet normal twins ordinarily have different placentas.

 

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