SINGAPORE, Nov 15: Two girls — whose inter-locked brains were separated in a 97-hour operation earlier this year — will fly home to Nepal this weekend after more than a year a Singapore hospital, medical staff said on Thursday.

“They are unlikely to need any more medical treatment than other children their age,” a Singapore General Hospital spokeswoman said.

As a precaution, a neurosurgeon from Kathmandu will accompany 18-month-old Ganga and Jamuna Shrestha on their flight back along with their parents and grandparents.

The sisters from the mountain town of Salyan arrived in October last year, their brains enmeshed into the same skull cavity and facing opposite directions.

For six months, physicians relied on computer technology to perfect the complex separation technique - performing virtual operations - before the rare surgery stretching over four days went ahead in April.

Although doctors pronounced the girls fit to depart last month, mother Sandhya Shrestha, father Bhushnan K.C. and their grandmother have been “building up their confidence” in rehabilitation therapy, the spokeswoman said.

Jamuna has made the most progress, medical staff said. She is able to sit up and is increasingly behaving like a normal child.

Ganga, who recuperated more slowly following the marathon operation, is more relaxed and no longer irritable, but has yet to sit up.

Professor Ho Lai Yun, head of the neonatology department, said earlier the twins need to leave the sterile hospital environment and experience the stimulation of a more normal life.—dpa