Betul:
Baby Aradhana, one of conjoined twins from Betul, died of a heart attack today around 15 days after doctors performed a complicated surgery to separate her from her sister Stuti. Aradhana and Stuti had celebrated their first birthday three days ago.
After they were born, Aradhana and Stuti had been abandoned and left in the hospital. Born into a poor family in Betul in Madhya Pradesh, their father, a farmer with barely two acres of land and their mother, said they were unable to figure out how to treat their twin daughters. Since then, the girls have been looked after by the hospital nurses, doctors and staff.
Top doctors from India and Australia had successfully operated upon the twins in a complex and over-12-hour-long operation on June 20. Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chauhan, who later visited the twins on their first birthday, had donated Rs 20 lakh from the Chief Minister's discretionary fund for the duo's expensive surgery. Several organisations, including NDTV viewers had donated funds for the operation.
The doctors had separated the twins' fused livers and removed their hearts from a common membrane cover in the operation that took place in four phases.