Baby girl born with an extra head

Surgeons in Afghanistan have carried out a life-saving operation on a baby girl born with an extra head.

Asree Gul, who is one of a pair of twins, was admitted to a hospital in the eastern city of Jalalabad with an extra head attached to her scalp, chief surgeon Ahmad Obaid Mojadidi said.

He said: ‘Her mother gave birth to twins, two girls.

‘One girl was in good health but the other had an abnormality. She had an extra head attached to her head.’

‘We separated the extra head from her body,’ he said a week after the operation which he described as the most sophisticated ever carried out in the impoverished city.

The two-month-old baby whose parents are farmers was released from hospital yesterday.

Surgeons believe that the extra head was part of a third baby that failed to develop properly in the womb.

They said the surgery was complicated as vital blood vessels in Asree Gul's skull were attached to the extra head.

Nematullah, Asree Gul’s father, said he had not expected his baby to survive the operation.

‘The doctors saved her life. I thank them,’ he said.

The surgeons carried out the operation free of charge as Asree Gul's parents could not afford it.

Afghanistan, plagued by more than 30 years of war and still fighting a decade-long Taliban insurgency, lacks modern healthcare.

However, facilities have improved thanks to the billions of dollars that have been pumped into the country by the international community in the last ten years.

Last month, surgeons in New Delhi, India, separated one-year-old Nigerian twins who were joined at the hip and had spinal cord fusion.

Hussaina and Hassana Badarus' surgery took 18 hours and was only the fourth such separation to be carried out in the world.

The procedure - which cost an estimated £64,000 and was paid for by a Nigerian philanthropist - was so risky that doctors were forced to conduct practice runs on dummies before attempting it for real.

Source: Dailymail