February 19, 2006	Sunday	Muharram 20, 1427

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ISLAMABAD, Feb 18: Mir Zaman felt lucky when his wife gave birth to triplets. But from the concern that now reflects from his face, it seems as if his worries outweighed his joy. His newly-born son is healthy, but the two baby girls, weighing no more than 5.5kg, are conjoined or Siamese twins.

With all the life saving gadgets attached to the little girls, they are said to be in stable condition.

Mir Zaman, also an earthquake victim, did not know that his wife Shazia was pregnant with three babies when he had to bring her from his village, called Kharigan, in the Neelum District to Jhambor Hospital near Ath-Makam.

The couple left home at 5am, and it took them 15 long hours to get to the hospital since the only jeepable road available was mostly destroyed by the October 8 earthquake and the landslides due to rains. Had the conditions been favourable, the journey to the hospital would not have taken more than two to the three hours, he said.

“We had to change transport twice. There were more landslides because of the rain. We reached the hospital by 8pm,” said the 26-year-old father. “After a brief stay at the Jhambor hospital, a lady doctor of Pakistan army put us on a military helicopter, specially called to take us to Muzaffarabad. And, at about 5:45am, my wife gave birth to a boy and two girls at the Abbas Institute of Medical Sciences in Muzaffarabad.” The doctors at the Institute recommended that the two girls should be flown to Islamabad where better medical attention was available, Zaman said.

The conjoined twins and the father, accompanied by the institute’s staff, were flown again aboard a special International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) helicopter. They were brought to Pakistan Instituted of Medical Sciences (Pims) where the babies are being kept in intensive care.

“The girls are in stable condition. They had some trouble breathing, but they are on oxygen now,” said paediatrician Dr Khawaja Tahir Aziz of Abbass Institute of Medical Sciences, Muzaffarabad.

Pims media coordinator Dr Waseem A Khawaja said: “All the necessary tests are underway. It is too soon to provide any information without complete reports and expert opinion. But this is probably the first case in Pakistan where triplets are born and two are conjoined twins.”

“In this case, surgery to separate them will only be performed if the twins have two hearts and all the other vital organs are separate. The twins are joined from chest and abdomen and from the looks of it, it seems as if the girls have one rib cage but the reports will give us more information about the seriousness of their case,” he said.