1.5 month-old conjoined twins celebrate Eid al-Adha

Sion resident and mother of conjoined twins born on July 27 at Sion civic hospital, Shahin Khan (26), celebrated Eid al-Adha at home. She is against surgery meant to separate the twins and said that currently they needed special clothes as they had separate heads but one neck and three hands.

Shahin’s rare, dicephalic paraphagus (two heads on one torso) boys have been named Gurfan and Mohamed and are one-and-a-half months old. The one to the right is Mohamed and to the left is Gurfan. They are joined sideways, with a fused thorax, common heart, abdomen, stomach and pelvis. Their faces and vertebrae are separate, and between them, they have three hands and two legs.

Sixty per cent of such twins die shortly after birth however, Shahin said, “They are as normal as other kids then why should I kill one purposely. My Allah does not permit me to kill, that itself is another miracle.”

Gurfan has a lung and Mohamed has none but breathes through a tiny fused trachea attached to his brother. The hospital had advised the poor couple to allow a separation surgery or at least let the babies remain in hospital for three months. However, Shahin and her husband, Irshad Khan, who works as a shoeshine man at Dadar station, brought them home after 15 days. The hospital provided a free nebuliser in case Mohamed needed it.

Dr Paras Kothari, head of paediatric surgery, Sion Hospital, said, “We tried to convince them to have a separation surgery but it’s their call. The weight of the twins has increased from 3.3 kg to 4.1 kg.”