Banya finally back home
Banya, the surviving one of the conjoined twins separated in August, is going home for the first time since the surgery that has changed her life, and for the better.
She was released from the Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib Medical University (BSMMU) Hospital yesterday and will soon be taken to her own home.
The six-month-old baby girl has passed most of her life so far at this hospital after she was born conjoined with her twin sister Barsha and brought here for the surgery to separate the two girls.
At a press briefing at the BSMMU Milton Hall, Chairman of the Paediatric Surgery Department Prof Shafiqul Haque said that Banya's condition is good now and she will be able to lead a normal life.
She will however have to follow up with the hospital in two weeks' time and also continue with some regular checkups after that.
“Though she weighs only 4.5 kilogrammes at present instead of an ideal 6.5 kilogrammes, one has to remember she was born premature and had to go through difficult stages like surgery and post operation complexities,” Prof Shafiqul Haque said.
He however added that the miracle baby has been gaining weight over the past month and her spine, which was slightly curved at birth, is now almost all right.
Meanwhile, the doctors who have carried out the surgery say that the success of this operation is a credit for the hospital and its expertise.
Vice Chancellor of BSMMU Prof Tahir said, “The rate of separation and survival of the conjoined twins is very low across the globe and more so in this country. Banya's success story shows that the BSMMU now has the total technical, surgical and medical expertise to conduct such complex operations.”
Pro Vice Chancellor Prof MA Majid and other doctors who conducted the surgery on Banya and Barsha were present at the press briefing.
Banya and Barsha were born to Golam Kibria Sarkar and Shahnaz Begum on March 24 at a clinic at Gaibandha. Soon after their birth, the couple brought the conjoined twins to Dhaka Medical College and Hospital (DMCH) to see if they could be separated through surgery. Doctors at DMCH sent them to BSMMU on April 4.
Following a long-term investigation, the doctors at BSMMU decided to carry out the operation to separate the twins on August 6. They were joined at their livers, gallbladder, chest bone and abdomen.
Barsha died seven and half hours after the operation.
Banya has been taken to her aunt's house at city's Mohammadpur. She will go home to her village after the Eid festival, family members said.
Statistics show that only a few hundred pairs of conjoined twins are born across the globe each year -- with odds of about one in every 100,000 births.
Experts say that when an embryo is about to split into identical twins but is stopped midway due to some kind of a problem, it leaves the partially separated egg to mature resulting in conjoined twins.
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