PORT-AU-PRINCE, Jun 06 2015 – Six-month-old twin girls are recovering well after becoming the first conjoined twins ever separated in their home country of Haiti..
The girls, Michelle and Marian Bernard, were born in November connected at the abdomen. They also have a separate triplet sister, Tamar.
Their parents learned 23 weeks into the pregnancy that the babies would have a problem Haiti’s health care system was ill equipped to handle. That set off an unprecedented international effort to get the babies the care they would need to live normal, healthy lives.
A team of doctors was assembled to perform the surgery, led by Dr. Henri Ford, the chief of surgery at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles. Ford himself is a native of Haiti who moved to the U.S. in his teens and now makes frequent return trips to treat patients in his homeland.
Rather than fly the babies to an American hospital for treatment, the decision was made to keep them close to home to make the process easier on the family and help develop the Haitian medical community.
The 7-hour-long operation took place on May 22 at Haiti’s most advanced medical facility, which was built as a public-private partnership between the Haitian government and Partners In Health, the aid group founded by D. Paul Farmer.
Making this complex surgery possible and giving the twins separate lives was not the first time their family has beaten the odds. The babies’ father, David, survived the 2010 earthquake after spending 7 days trapped in the rubble.
