Doctors at Mbarara Regional Referral Hospital have been hailed for separating conjoined twins.
The twins that were joined on the umbilical cord were separated on Friday last week by a team of eight medics.
Dr. Celestine Barigye, the Director of Mbarara Regional Referral Hospital, said the doctors at the facility proved that they are world class.
He added that the operation will go into the records of the hospital due to its nature of complexity.
“This operation was complicated because we needed specialists for almost every organ, for instance if we did not have a specialist for the gallbladder, the operation could not take place so getting all these specialties in one place is not easy,” he said.
Dr Barigye appealed to the government to render more support to the facility to allow them to carry out more surgeries.
Dr. Deus Twesigye, a Senior Consultant General Surgeon who led the team of doctors says they were delivered at 33 weeks contrary to the 40 weeks of normal delivery.
He says because they were born prematurely, they were placed in the neonatal intensive care unit noting that they need a lot of attention and are complying with the medication.
Dr. Felix Oyania, another paediatric surgeon, however, expressed confidence in the survival rate of the twins pending other subsequent surgeries in the future.
“The way the babies are responding to the medication and their growth rate is giving us hopes that they will also manage to survive future operations, depending on what complications”.
Halson Kagure, the Mbarara Regional Referral Hospital Public Relations Officer, says the twins are responding to post-operation medication in the intensive care unit under close monitoring of medics that carried out the operation.
He says with all the necessary equipment needed, the team is hopeful that the babies will be discharged in the next four weeks.
The conjoined twins were delivered at Ruharo Mission hospital last week weighing 3.5kgs each and later referred to Mbarara Regional Referral Hospital where they were separated.
Rebecca Nkunda, the mother of the twins and a resident of Kakooba ward, Mbarara city says her contractions were normal until when she failed to respond to the medication to allow birth.
Nkunda hopes that her twins respond to treatment and recover well.
This is the second time Mbarara referral hospital has conducted a successful operation with the last one done in 2013 led by Dr. Martin Situma, the Senior Pediatric Surgeon.
Mbarara Regional Referral Hospital joins Soroti which managed to separate conjoined twins in 2021 and Mulago which conducted the same operation to separate conjoined twins in 2022.
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