Odisha: Kandhamal Woman Gives Birth To Conjoined Twins At MKCG Hospital
The case has drawn comparisons with Jaga and Balia, the conjoined twins from Milipada village in Kandhamal district, who were born on April 9, 2015, joined at the head.
A 22-year-old woman from Kandhamal district gave birth to male conjoined twins with two heads and a single body at the government-run Maharaja Krushna Chandra Gajapati (MKCG) Medical College and Hospital in Brahmapur on Sunday night. The newborn’s condition is critical, with doctors reporting respiratory complications.
The baby, weighing 2.25 kg at birth, has been admitted to the hospital’s neonatal intensive care unit (NICU), where a multidisciplinary team of specialists is closely monitoring its condition.
According to Dr Manas Ranjan Sahu, head of the hospital’s department of paediatric surgery, the rare congenital condition is medically known as dicephalic parapagus, in which two heads and necks are attached to a single trunk.
The newborn has two spinal columns but shares a single heart and liver. It has one pair of arms and legs and a single genitourinary tract with male external genitalia. Doctors have also found that the baby has no anal opening, Dr Sahu said.
“The baby’s condition is critical, and respiratory complications have already developed,” he said, adding that the complex anatomical abnormalities and associated complications make the prognosis uncertain.
Hospital superintendent Dr Sudeepa Dash said a multidisciplinary team had been formed to provide specialised care to the newborn. “This is perhaps the first case of its kind reported at MKCG Medical College and Hospital,” she said.
The baby was delivered by caesarean section after the mother, a resident of the Tumudibandh area of Kandhamal district, was referred to the hospital for specialised medical care. The infant was born at 32 weeks of gestation and is the couple’s first child. The father works as a daily-wage labourer.
Doctors said conjoined twins are an extremely rare occurrence, estimated in this case to be around one in three lakh births. Their survival depends on the nature of the anatomical abnormalities, the organs involved and the complications that develop after birth.
The case has drawn comparisons with Jaga and Balia, the conjoined twins from Milipada village in Kandhamal district, who were born on April 9, 2015, joined at the head. They underwent a landmark separation surgery at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), New Delhi, in October 2017. Balia later died of septicaemia in November 2020, while Jaga survived and continued rehabilitation.
