Veena & Vani, always smiling, never mind the struggle

Suresh Dharur

Tribune News Service

Hyderabad, June 22

A smile stays planted on the face of Veena and that of her conjoined twin Vani. It can melt any heart. What the Siamese sisters have to endure daily and could in the future can break any heart too.

There appears to be no end to the misery of the conjoined twins. The twins have been living at the state-owned children’s hospital here for the last nine years, but the parents of the 13-year-old sisters have refused to take them back, citing poor economic conditions.

As per government rules, they have to be handed over to their parents at the age of 13, making their stay at the children’s hospital impossible.

Their parents, auto driver M. Murali and daily-wager M. Nagalakshmi from the neighbouring Warangal district, met Telangana Deputy Chief Minister K Srihari and expressed their inability to take their daughters home, saying they could not afford their upkeep and treatment.

Earlier, a team of doctors from the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), New Delhi, ruled out surgical separation of the sisters who are conjoined at the head. The experts say that the twins will not be able to survive the surgery. The AIIMS team sent a report last week, saying the surgery could be extremely risky as the twins share important blood vessels and nerves in the head. If surgery is performed, it may prove fatal or give them neurological debility.

Veena and Vani cannot look at each. They are conjoined at the head, the top of one fused into the back of the other in such a way that they cannot face each other. Their world has been confined to the Niloufer children’s hospital in Hyderabad and the doctors and nurses, who attend to them round the clock, have been their only companions for the last nine years.

“If the parents refuse to take them back, then we will have to hand over the twins to the Telangana Child Welfare Department,” says Dr C Suresh, superintendent of Niloufer Hospital.

Unmindful of the developments surrounding them, the twins say they would not like to leave Niloufer. “It is our home. We want to stay here. If our operation is successful, we want to go to school,” says Vani.

Always smiling and bubbly, Veena and Vani are like any other children, except for the “craniopagus” (conjoined at the head) condition. They are healthy with normal functioning of the brain.

Several national and international experts were consulted to explore surgery options but it could not be taken up because of the huge risk involved. A renowned neurosurgeon from Singapore, Dr Keith Goh, who has the experience of operating on four pairs of craniopagus conjoined twins, had offered to perform the surgery on the girls a few years ago. But the parents had then refused to give consent.