Conjoined Twins in Pak Seek Aid for Surgery as Death Looms large

Safa and Marva have separate brains.

(Photo courtesy: AP/ Caters)

Video Editor: Ashutosh Bhardwaj

A pair of conjoined twins, who are fused at the head have defied the odds and celebrated their first birthday. However, their widowed mother is still waiting for a miracle to happen so that her kids can be surgically separated.

Zainab Bibi, 36, gave birth to Safa and Marva at a hospital in Peshawar, Pakistan in January 2017.

The infants are 'craniopagus twins', which means they are joined at the head, a phenomenon that occurs just once in every 2.5 million births.

Despite being joined together at the tip of their skulls, the twins have separate brains, a range of scans have shown.

However, uncertainty over surgery has plundered the poverty-stricken family into chaos.

Zainab, who lost her husband 10 days before giving birth to the twins, says, "It's getting tougher day by day to take care of them”.

The family claims that since the twins were born, several people, including members of the Pakistan government, promised them help, but to no avail.

Their maternal grandfather, Muhammad Sadiq said:

Since the birth of Safa and Marva, lot of people promised us that they will sponsor their treatment. Some members of the government even told us that they will send them abroad, if surgery for such a condition can not be performed in Pakistan.

Craniopagus Twins is a phenomenon that occurs just once in every 2.5 million births.

Around 40 percent of these kind of twins are stillborn. Of those that survive, a third die within 24 hours of birth.

If craniopagus twins survive to that point, there is still an 80 percent risk they would die before the age of two if they are not separated.

Separation means one or both of the twins may suffer developmental complications.

Usually the twins would share brains and have completely separate organs, but in this instance, both the kids have a separate brain.