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—Team leader

By Demola Akinyemi

Leader of a 66- man surgeon team that successfully carried out the separation of conjoined twins at the University of Ilorin Teaching Hospital, UITH, in January 2021, Professor Lukman Abdur-Raheem, has disclosed that the hospital has lost one of the twins, due to adhesive intestinal obstruction, barely two weeks to her second birthday.

The university don disclosed this in Ilorin, weekend, while delivering its 222nd Inaugural lecture, with the theme: ‘Shades of Joy and Cry: Intricacies of Children’s Surgery for Restoring Smile and Hope for the Future’.

Prof. Abdur-Raheem narrated that the twin sister “is hale and hearty and is among the mammoth crowd with her mother, among the audience at the university’s auditorium, venue of the lecture.”

The management of the UITH on January 14, 2021, presented the set of female twins, alive, to the public after doctors successfully separated them.

It was reported at the time that the feat was made possible despite the dearth of equipment at the hospital. 

The Chief Medical Director CMD, of UITH, Prof. Abdullah Dasilva Yussuf, who briefed the press on the occasion attributed the accomplishment to the commitment and determination of the team.

However, the leader of the team, who performed the feat, explained that “the conjoined twins were rare anomalies resulting from an abnormal division of fertilised ovum during the process of twinning”. 

Conjoined twins, he said, have intricate parts that are shared uniquely from the head to the toes and require thorough investigations to determine anatomic and physiologic implications of the separation of the shared parts.

He added, “About 19 pairs of conjoined twins were reported to have been born alive or dead in Nigeria in the last nine decades, from which the UITH, Ilorin had managed three pairs between 2005 and  2015, even under fragile conditions. 

“In our setting, we adopted adult investigative and therapeutic equipment for optimal outcomes since many children’s equipment are not available”.

The success of the first successful separation of conjoined twins in Ilorin in January 2021, according to him, resulted from the cohesive 66-man multi-disciplinary collaborative team under his leadership. 

“The application of simulation skills in the clinical scenarios, he said, was presented and highly commended at the 2021 Bethune Round Table conference in Canada”.