President Nana Akufo-Addo has announced plans to cater for the surgery of two months old Siamese twins at the Ridge Hospital.
The Siamese twins are conjoined at the head and will need an amount of GH¢3,000,000.00 for surgery to enable them live independently.
A situation that has seen medical doctors at the facility racing against time to separate them.
However, the Chief of staff, Frema Osei Opare, at a press briefing on Monday, July 5, 2021, brought forth the good news.
This is the first time the doctors in the hospital will conduct such a specialised operation .
A Neurosurgeon at the Ridge Hospital, Dr Samuel Kaba Akoriyea, in an interview with JoyNews’ Super Morning Show host, Kojo Yankson, said the operation will be done in various phases.
“A minimum of 45 stages of surgery will be required because when you view the image, the first thing you see is that their heads are joined. There is a bone defect because the brains are attached and you need to work on that. If we are able to separate them successfully, which we hope to, then we should have enough skin to cover up.
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“Again, they have a lot of blood vessels that are now coming up and the more you wait, the more they get intertwined, and it becomes more difficult,” he said.
Conjoined twins are said to occur once in every 2.5 million births.
Parents of the twins, Justine Bansah and Samuel Addo, said they were surprised at the news of their twins being Siamese.