The must-have newsletter about Hungary

HUNGARIAN DOCTORS TO PERFORM RECONSTRUCTION SURGERY ON BANGLADESHI SIAMESE TWIN

 

A team of Hungarian doctors will be travelling to Bangladesh to perform a delayed skull reconstruction surgery on one of the Bangladeshi Siamese twins who were separated in a series of operations last year. The Foundation for Defenceless People, which organised last year’s operation to separate the twins, said Rabeya’s surgery had been delayed from this past summer because of the coronavirus pandemic but could not be held off any longer. The operation will be performed by neurosurgeon András Csókay from Budapest’s Honvéd Hospital, plastic surgeon Gergely Pataki and pediatrician Marcell Csapodi, who is leading the series of medical procedures on the twins dubbed “Operation Freedom”. The team’s journey to Bangladesh and the procedure itself will be organised under strict epidemiological protocols, the statement said.
Rokaiya and Rabeya were separated in a 33-hour operation organised by the Foundation for Defenceless People in August 2019 in Dhaka, Bangladesh, in what was the third step of Operation Freedom. The first phase, including groundbreaking work to separate the blood flow of the brains, was conducted by a Hungarian team led by István Hudák in Bangladesh in August 2018. Preparatory surgery to separate the twins was performed in Hungary in January last year. The marathon operation in Dhaka in August was carried out by a team of 35 Hungarian doctors and assistants led by Csókay.