Thread by @toluogunlesi

Heartwarming news of the successful separation of conjoined female twins at the University of Ilorin Teaching Hospital (UITH), yesterday.

Can anyone pls confirm that these photos circulating on social media are from that surgery?

Part of why this is even more exciting is that the 1st time UITH attempted a separation of conjoined twins, fifteen years ago, the babies sadly died, after 14 hours. So it’s really gladdening to see that UITH haven’t given up, and that the ‘class of 2020’ are alive & doing well.

Nov 2019, another set of conjoined twins, girls, joined in the chest & stomach, were successfully separated, this time at the National Hospital Abuja. Here’s @VOAAfrica reporting on the surgery,described as the most complicated of its kind ever in Nigeria: voanews.com/africa/nigeria…

August 2020, Federal Medical Center Yola successfully separated another set of conjoined twin girls. The @NigAirForce helped fly the parents and twins from Yenagoa where they were born to Yola where the surgery was done. FMC Yola building a reputation for excellence in this area.

All the 3 sets of conjoined twins in this thread have been girls. Why’s that? So I’ve just found a research paper from 2001 that alludes to reports that in Nigeria, girls are more than 5 times more likely (x5.5) to be born conjoined, than boys. Next tweet for suggested reasons.

Why are there many more conjoined girls than boys in Nigeria?

One theory is that it might have to do with the fact that male conjoined twins lack the staying power of female ones and therefore don’t survive to even be born. (No doubt all the girls in this thread are fighters!)

The leader of the UITH medical team that separated the twins is Lukman Abdur-Rahman, a Paediatric Surgeon. I believe he’s the one pictured above (yes it’s now been confirmed that the photos at the start of this thread are indeed from the UITH separation surgery).

“This is the 3rd separation we have done here in Yola. We did two when I was in (Maiduguri Teaching Hospital). So this makes it the fifth that my team has done. In all the five, I have been the lead surgeon.” — Prof Auwal Abubakar of FMC Yola, after the Aug 2020 twins separation.

Here’s that 2001 paper on conjoined twins in Nigeria: “The Ibadan conjoined twins: A report of omphalopagus twins and a review of cases reported in Nigeria over 60 years.”

(If you know of any more recent studies please share thanks).

researchgate.net/profile/Timoth…