Odisha Channel Bureau
BHUBANESWAR: Conjoined twins – Jaga and Balia – from Odisha’s Kandhamal district, who were successfully separated on Wednesday by a team of doctors at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), New Delhi, are in stable condition.
Ashok Kumar Mahapatra, chief of the Neurosciences Centre of AIIMS, has thanked Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik for extending financial support to the conjoined twins for their surgery.
“We thank Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik for granting Rs. 1 core towards the surgery of the conjoined twins Jaga and Balia from the Chief Minister’s Relief Fund,” said Dr. Mohapatra while talking to journalists on Wednesday.
Apart from Dr. Mahapatra, the other Odia doctors – Mihir Prakash Pandia, Girija Prasad Rath and Sambhu Nath Das – were in the team of doctors that conducted the rare medical intervention.
The two-year-old twins, who were joined at the head, were separated following a 16-hour-long second phase surgery. The twins have been kept under observation in the hospital ICU.
Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik has congratulated the team of specialists from the institute’s neurosurgery, neuroanaesthesia and plastic surgery departments for the successful separation of Jaga and Balia.
The first phase of the surgery was performed on August 28 when the doctors created venous bypass to separate the veins shared by the babies that returns blood to the heart from the brain.
Meanwhile, people in different parts of Odisha cutting across party lines are organising prayer sessions for fast recovery of the two boys.
