But, despite what was visibly a case of a medical emergency, the family says they were ignored by the medics and Mulago, forcing them to return to Soroti Regional Referral Hospital on Wednesday.
Mulago National Referral Hospital has denied sending away a
helpless grandfather of conjoined twins after failing to separate a dead twin from another who was still alive.
The twins were born through Cesarean section more than a
week ago at Amuria hospital. At birth one of them was found dead while the
other was alive, prompting medics to refer the children to Soroti Regional
Referral Hospital for possible detachment. But the team in Soroti also referred
the family to Mulago National Referral Hospital, where they arrived on Monday
last week.
But, despite what was visibly a case of a medical emergency, the family says they were ignored by the medics and Mulago, forcing them to return to Soroti Regional Referral Hospital on Wednesday. This development came off as a surprise to many
considering that Mulago is Uganda’s top referral facility that recently
upgraded to a specialized facility that can conduct complicated tertiary
procedures.
However, David Nuwamanya, the Mulago Hospital
Principal Administrator said it’s not true that the baby was referred back to Soroti
for separation. Instead, he says, that the caretaker disappeared before the case was handled.
While the hospital says the patient disappeared, Paul Oluo, the grandfather of the conjoined twins told
URN on Tuesday that after three days of waiting and seeing the live baby’s
health deteriorating and the dead one decomposing, the lower cadre health
workers at the ward offered him 10,000 Shillings to use as transport to go back home.
He says the doctors said there’s nothing much they could do
as an operation would be unsuccessful and gave him a referral note
back to Soroti.
//Cue in; “I registered a child...
Cue out….On Thursday.”//
He says he couldn’t use public transport because the dead baby was decomposing.
//Cue in; “They told me...
Cue out…One is still alive”. //
However, Soroti hospital later, on Saturday saved the baby in
an operation that lasted more than five hours. According to Dr Joseph Epodoi,
the Consultant Surgeon who conducted the procedure, the two shared the liver
and chest walls. The deceased twin had already started rotting by the time of
the operation.
So far, he says the baby is steadily recovering and the
a mother who had been in a critical condition since the caesarian section operation
was also out of danger.
Meanwhile, experts say having conjoined twins is a rare
condition characterized by a fusion of separable or an inseparable part or parts
of the body of twins. Separation surgeries usually take more than 10-hours and
the survival of the living twins depends on their shared systems.
Though rare, this was the third time since November for
Mulago to have a case of Co-joined twins.
The first was a very complicated surgery that involved
a multidisciplinary team of 20 specialists who separated an 11 months old set of
twins. The twins that are still admitted to date shared a rectum,
they didn’t have a separate vagina, shared a urethra and the spinal code was
joined at the tail end.
