A woman in Sambalpur gave birth to conjoined twin girls at the District Headquarters Hospital on Saturday. As per hospital sources, the twins have separate heads, but their bodies have been conjoined from the belly to the neck.
The girls were born to Rabina Kumari, wife of a 'panipuri' vendor at Rengali.
The doctors of the hospital advised Rabina and her husband to take the newborn twins to Burla or Cuttack for advanced treatment. However, the parents of the twin girls expressed their inability to bear the treatment cost due to their poor financial condition.
“We are originally from Bihar. We have been settled in Rengali for the last 20 years. We are poor people. It’s even difficult for us to make our ends meet. We will not be able to bear the cost of the advanced treatment of the conjoined twins,” said Rabina’s father-in-law Bijay Chaudhury.
“We are in a state of despair. We could only pray for the well-being of the newborn twins. We request the State government and corporate sectors to come forward with helping hands for the operation and advanced treatment of the conjoined babies,” he said.
Jaga and Kalia from Melupada village in Kandhamal district of Odisha, who were suffering from a rare congenital disorder called Craniopagus parasiticus, were earlier separated at the AIIMS, New Delhi after a marathon surgery of 11 hours in October 2017. They were admitted to Delhi AIIMS on July 13, 2017 with the help of Odisha government.
However, in November last year, Jaga’s brother Kalia died due to septicaemia while undergoing treatment at SCB Medical College and Hopsital in Cuttack.