RIYADH — Tanzanian conjoined twins — Hassan and Hussein Omari Saidi — will undergo surgical separation in Riyadh on Thursday.

The medical team, headed by Advisor at the Royal Court and General Supervisor of the King Salman Humanitarian Aid and Relief Center (KSRelief) Dr. Abdullah Al Rabeeah, will carry out the surgery at the King Abdullah Specialist Children’s Hospital in the King Abdulaziz Medical City under the Ministry of National Guard. This is in implementation of the directives of Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Salman and Crown Prince and Prime Minister Mohammed bin Salman.

In a press briefing, Dr. Al Rabeeah said the surgery is expected to take 16 hours and will be performed over nine phases with a team of 35 doctors, specialists, and technical and nursing staff. The Tanzanian twins are two years old and weigh 13.5 kilograms together. Accompanied by their mother, the twins were airlifted from the city of Dar es Salaam of Tanzania on board a medical evacuation plane on Aug. 23. After their arrival, the twins were transferred to King Abdullah Specialist Children’s Hospital to carry out the necessary medical checkups and to examine the possibility of conducting their successful surgical separation, he said.

“Multiple medical checkups were carried out and it was found that the twins share the lower chest, abdomen, and pelvis area, and each has one lower limb, and they share a third, deformed lower limb. They are also joined in the liver, intestines, urinary system, and have one male reproductive organ, and are deformed in the lower abdominal wall and urinary bladder.

It is noteworthy that the KSRelief undertakes treatment of conjoined twins, within the framework of the humanitarian role it plays in harnessing its efforts to manage and coordinate relief work and meet the expenses of their surgical separation free of charge. Saudi Arabia continues to remain the topper among the countries of the world in the number of operations carried out to separate conjoined twins.

Over the course of the past 33 years since 1990, the Saudi Program for the Separation of Conjoined Twins was able to follow up 133 cases of conjoined twins from 24 countries and has been succeeded in conducting successful surgical separation of 58 conjoined twins, with the Tanzanian twins being the 59th case.

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