Separated Siamese twins celebrate first b'day

Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan will take part in the cake-cutting ceremony for which the Padhar hospital here has made elaborate arrangements.

However, the celebrations will miss the usual fanfare as Aradhana's condition is still serious and she is on ventilator, hospital sources said.

Stuti is doing well since she was separated from Aradhana, they said. She has started taking oral food and her vital parameters are fine, they said.

The hospital staff will bring out Stuti for some time in the tents erected for celebrating their birthday while Aradhana's condition does not permit her to be taken out of the Paediatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU), sources said.

The duo were admitted to hospital merely 10 minutes after their birth on May 11 this year and by the time they were stable, their parents decided to donate them to the hospital as they were not in a position to take care of the twins, joined at heart and liver.

The hospital decided to perform the critical surgery of separating them following which experts from abroad and India were contacted.

The twins were successfully separated after a day-long complex surgery conducted by a team of 34 medical experts, including 23 doctors from India and abroad, on June 20 at the Missionary Hospital in Padhar here.