An Air Force plane took off on Wednesday from the precarious airport of Nouakchott, the capital of Mauritania, with a special mission: the transfer to Barcelona of two Siamese sisters who have entered the Sant Joan de Déu hospital for in order to be subjected to a highly complex separation surgery. Khadija and Cherive were born on October 8 joined at the top of the abdomen, with a single umbilical cord and a combined weight of 5.2 kilos. According to sources at the hospital, their clinical situation is stable and they are breathing without difficulty and without the need for supplemental oxygen.
The air evacuation medical unit (Umaer) provided a plane with critical care equipment adapted to the case of the girls, who remained stable during the flight and "received appropriate treatment" by a mixed team trained by civilian personnel from Sant Joan de Déu and the Umaer medical team, the Air Force explained to X.
The patients were admitted to the neonatal intensive care unit of Sant Joan de Déu, accompanied by their relatives. The teams of neonatology and surgery, as well as specialists in cardiology, gastroenterology, anesthesia and nutrition, among others, are practicing complementary tests to those done in Mauritania, in order to obtain more precise information to plan- nor the separation. According to the hospital, the surgery will take place in the next few days.
It is a complicated operation with very few successful antecedents in Spain, two cases in Madrid and one in Seville, according to some media. In Catalonia, the only precedent was recorded in 2012, when a large multidisciplinary team from Vall d'Hebron separated two Siamese sisters aged seven months. Núria and Marta were united by the abdomen from the sternum to the navel and had a single liver, with two gall bladders.
Siamese twin pregnancies are very rare and usually end in miscarriage. Although according to some calculations they mean one in every 200,000 births, the survival rate at birth is very low, between 5% and 25%. After surviving gestation and birth, just over half of Siamese siblings survive separation surgeries.
This is an intervention that is undoubtedly unaffordable for the Mauritanian health system. In this north-west African country "hospitals in general do not meet the minimum standards", warns the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. "The sanitary conditions are extremely precarious. For this reason, before traveling to Mauritania, it is essential to take out medical insurance that includes the possibility of air evacuation in case of need", he adds.
Khadija and Cherive are cared for thanks to Cuida'm, a solidarity program supported by donations through which the Sant Joan de Déu hospital in Barcelona treats an average of 20 cases a year of children with serious, curable and not accessible due to lack of financial resources. They account for 20% of requests of this kind received by the hospital establishment.
