The dazzling Jewish New Year story of the successfully separated Israeli conjoined twins gains added resonance when we learn the medical team was led by British neurosurgeon Noor ul Owase Jeelani from London’s Great Ormond Street Hospital.
The 12-hour procedure at Beersheba’s Soroka Medical Centre was the first such surgery performed outside the UK by the team from medical charity Gemini Untwined, founded in 2018 by Mr Owase Jeelani.
The London Evening Standard reported: “The team have now completed five separation surgeries since 2006, two of them before Gemini was set up”.
Mr Jeelani, a University of Nottingham Medical School graduate who speaks Arabic and Urdu along with English, told the Standard: “I am delighted that the surgery has gone well and the girls, their family and the local team have had a good outcome”.
All this wonderful news leads me to speculate that the twins and their parents are Negev Bedouin.
Why?
Soroka Medical Centre’s locale.
The heroic surgeon’s multi-lingual skills
Kamal Rahman, a co- founder of Gemini Untwined has commented: “ … the prevalence of conjoined twins is higher in less developed communities where there is little foetal monitoring …”
NATALIE WOOD
08 September 2021