Twins born sharing an abdomen

A successful delivery by a 27-year-old woman turned into a surprise after she gave birth to conjoined twins.

Ms Evelyn Omodho had gone to the Rift Valley Provincial General Hospital in Nakuru.

She was admitted to the hospital’s annex wing where she hoped to deliver “normal” twins as she had been told by nurses during her pre-natal clinic visits.

With this assurance, Ms Omodho never went for a scan to check if the babies were fine.

However, her waters broke before the due date prompting the potato trader to travel from her Oloenguruone home to the hospital.

“I expected a Caesarean Section delivery and did not want to take chances at a local hospital. That’s why I travelled here,” said Ms Omodho, who was Monday referred to Kenyatta National Hospital in Nairobi.

The mother of a three-year-old girl had hoped that the twins would be boys or at least one of them would be male.

Two days after she delivered the Siamese twins, Ms Omodho is yet to name them.

“I have not yet named them because I cannot tell if it is one boy or two,” she said.

The babies have two heads but are joined from the neck to the groin area. Each of them has a hand and a leg.

And Wikipedia says the overall survival rate of conjoined twins is somewhere between 5 per cent and 25 per cent.

This is not the first time that conjoined twins are being born in Kenya.

In 2004, two conjoined boys died at a Mombasa hospital a few days after they were born.

“This is the first birth of a kind in this hospital,” said the nurse-in-charge at the annex, Ms Eunice Muthee. Though Ms Omodho was shocked when she saw her new bundle, she was happy that God had given her the gift.

At the time of the interview, Ms Omodho was preparing to take the babies to Nairobi hoping for a surgery to separate the babies.

Ms Muthee said the babies were healthy but could not breast-feed.

She said they would need to be examined by experts at KNH who would advise on the way forward.

“We have referred the babies to the hospital for further examination,” the nurse said.

The three-day old twins from Nakuru are conjoined at the abdomen and have two heads, two legs and three hands which are visible.

Monday, Kenyatta National Hospital spokesman Simon Ithae said they are admitted to the hospital’s neo-natal Intensive Care Unit (ICU) where they are currently unwell.

“Doctors have taken several X-rays to determine how they will be clinically managed next,” Mr Ithae added.

Additional reporting by Mike Mwaniki