New Delhi, April 10 – The “very rare” conjoined twins with one body and two heads, who were born to a poor family in Haryana’s Sonipat district last month, have died after battling for survival for about three weeks.
The twin girls were born on March 13 and had caught widespread attention as they had one body, two heads, two spines and two separate oesophaguses but only one heart and one stomach.
“No one thought that they would survive so long. They put up a brave fight,” said the spokesperson at All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), where the conjoined twins were undergoing treatment. The babies died after suffering a cardiac respiratory arrest on April 1.
The mother of the twins, Urmila Sharma, 28, who was recovering at Cygnus J.K. Hindu Hospital, could not see them as they were being treated in Delhi. The condition of the twins was called dicephalus parapagus. Doctors at Sonipat as well as at AIIMS had earlier said that chances of the twins’ survival were bleak as their heart was very weak.
“They suffered respiratory problems… In the last few days of March, we had put them on ventilator. However, they died of heart failure,” the spokesperson said.
Dr. Amit Gupta, medical director of Sonipat’s Cygnus J.K. Hindu Hospital, where the twins were born, had virtually ruled out the possibility of separating them because they shared the vital organs.
“In 50 per cent of such cases the babies are stillborn, only 35 per cent survive till the first day; however, these twins showed their determination and 
survived for two weeks,” said Dr. Gupta. The twins were referred to AIIMS for better treatment a day after their birth.
The father, Subhash Kumar who works as a labourer in the Atlas bicycle factory in Sonipat and earns a meagre salary of Rs.5,000, told Mail Today: “We think it was God’s will. We had accepted their fate.
We would have been happier had the babies survived. Even though doctors had told us that they had minimal chances of survival, we hoped they’d live.” “It was only because we could afford the treatment we could not discover that the babies were not developing well,” the 32-year-old father said.
-INDIA TODAY
