The first known conjoined twins born in the Palestinian territories made a rare journey from the impoverished Gaza Strip to a Saudi hospital aboard a plane chartered by the Saudi king.
To get there on Tuesday, the tiny, 11-day-old girls had to overcome a particularly Gazan string of obstacles: blockaded borders, squabbling governments and holiday restrictions in Israel and Egypt.
The twins, who are joined at the chest and share a small intestine, arrived safely for separation surgery in Saudi Arabia and doctors say they have a good chance to survive and lead normal lives.
Khaled al-Marghalani of the Saudi Health Ministry said the girls named Rital and Ritaj were taken to the National Guard Hospital in the capital, Riyadh.
The twins were born on March 27 in the southern Gaza town of Khan Younis. They weighed four kilograms (8.8 pounds), said Gaza doctor Ayman Abu Amouna, who treated them.
Each girl has her own heart, lungs and other organs, he said, increasing chances they’ll be able to survive apart.
TV footage of the twins in the Gaza hospital shows them sleeping face to face, each in her own diaper, one with an arm around the other’s body.
The birth sparked curiosity in Gaza, and doctors from around the territory came to see a condition they had only read about in books, said Mohammed al-Kashif of Gaza’s Health Ministry.
“This is a very rare and strange case,” he said. “The doctors have never seen anything like it.”
Al-Kashif said the girls’ birth was the first of conjoined twins on record in the Palestinian territories. A spokesman for the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority’s Health Ministry concurred.
Separating the twins requires a skilled surgeon and resources not available in Gaza.
Gaza’s hospitals have suffered under the Israeli-Egyptian blockade imposed after the Islamic militant Hamas seized control of the territory in 2007. Since then, Hamas has ruled Gaza, while the Western-backed Palestinian Authority governs only the West Bank. All attempts at reconciliation have failed.
Al-Kashif said Gaza health officials knew they lacked the resources to separate the twins, so they requested help from the Saudi Embassy in Egypt.
Saudi King Abdullah heard about the twins through the media and ordered they be brought to the kingdom for surgery, said Ahmad al-Sedairi, the Saudi ambassador to Egypt. The king has funded such surgeries in the kingdom from other parts of the world.
But these twins ran into obstacles in getting there. The girls and their father lacked passports, which must be issued by the West Bank’s Palestinian Authority.
Since Israel forbids nearly all Palestinian travel between the territories, the Saudis enlisted the West Bank Health Ministry, which made special arrangements to have the passports issued on Saturday, said health ministry spokesman Omar Nasser.
Since the family hadn’t paid their fees, the health minister himself paid the required $190, Nasser said.
Because Israel was observing the last Sabbath of the Passover holiday, the passports couldn’t be transferred across the Jewish state to Gaza until Sunday, Nasser said. The family received them, but couldn’t travel on Monday because of a separate holiday in Egypt.
Further complications arose because Egypt has minimal contact with Gaza’s Hamas government, preferring to deal with the rival Palestinian Authority.
But on Tuesday, the Saudis intervened again, and Hamas facilitated the twins’ trip to the border, which Egypt opened specially so they could cross.
Tuesday afternoon, the family boarded a special medical plane chartered by the Saudi king. In Saudi Arabia, the Kingdom’s chief surgeon and Health Minister Abdullah al-Rabia will perform the surgery, said al-Sedairi, the ambassador.
The king will pick up the bill.
-
Hubbard reported from Ramallah, West Bank. Mohammed Daraghmeh in Ramallah, Ashraf Sweilam in Rafah, Egypt, and Maamoun Youssef in Cairo contributed reporting.
Related posts:
Posted in 
