Betul, Madhya Pradesh:
There were prayers, chanting, singing, and for a short time this morning, Padhar hospital in Madhya Pradesh's Betul district might have been mistaken to be a site for a multi-faith religious gathering. That idea wouldn't be misplaced. 11-month-old conjoined twins Aradhana and Stuti who have quite literally lived in the hospital since birth are being operated today in an attempt to separate them. And so cheering the girls were hospital staff, nurses, doctors and people from just about everywhere. And through all of this, the two girls remained as cheery and jolly as ever.
The mammoth operation has been made possible after NDTV viewers and readers of ndtv.com contributed over Rs 10 lakhs for them. Today 23 doctors and 11 nurses from across India and Australia have begun the exercise of separating their fused livers and removing their hearts from a common membrane cover.
In the first medical bulletin at noon, Dr Rajeev Chaudhari heading the team of doctors, said the girls had been given anaesthesia and were responding well. "The first process is to deal with removing their heart from the common membrane which could take about an hour. Then once that is done, we will begin working on their livers," he said.
"The idea is to separate their livers and ensure all the veins and membranes remain unaffected. It's complicated and critical but we will get it done," explained Albert Shool, a liver transplant surgeon from Sydney who has separated six conjoined twins in the last few years. "Their hearts share a common membrane so we need to put in another membrane, so that each girl's heart has their own membrane," he added.
"Yesterday, all the teams got together and did a full dry run of the process. Then each of the teams separately began checking their equipment, did more tests- all this to be fully prepared," explained Rebecca Jacob, Chief Anaesthesiologist.
Doctors say the operation involves about five steps and is likely to last till about 7 pm this evening after which they will be shifted to the Intensive Care Unit.
Their father Haril Lal Yadav, visibly tense says they are waiting to take them back home.
Ironically, Aradhana and Stuti were abandoned and left in the hospital after they were born. 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, who were joined at the chest. Since then, the girls have been looked after by the hospital nurses, doctors and staff.