KUNDUZ (Afghanistan) - AN AFGHAN woman has given birth to a baby
boy attached at the chest to a headless conjoined twin, a doctor at
a hospital in northern Afghanistan said on Monday.
The otherwise healthy infant was born on Thursday with the
torso, legs and hands of a male twin attached, he said.
'For the first few days the attached second body was also alive
and was moving, but now it is dead,' Dr Homayoun Khamoosh of Kunduz
hospital told AFP. 'It is the first time we have seen a case like
this in Kunduz province.'
Dr Khamoosh said an operation to separate the babies was needed
to save the life of the fully formed child.
'Doctors have decided to carry out surgery to separate the two
bodies before it (the headless body) decomposes,' said Dr
Khamoosh.
The 35-year-old mother, who has four other children, hid her
face from cameras at the baby's bedside and would not give her
name.
Afghanistan suffers from one of the world's highest rates of
mother and child mortality during labour, mainly because of poor
maternal healthcare in a destitute country devastated by decades of
civil war.
-- AFP
