Our Journey

In 2006, Gemini Untwined trustees Professors Richard Hayward and David Dunaway were referred a set of craniopagus twins, still in the womb.

Having no experience in such separation surgeries, they contacted New York colleagues, neurosurgeon Jim Goodrich and plastic surgeon David Staffenberg, who came to London to help with the first and last of four staged procedures in 2006.

Rital and Ritag come from a family of doctors, so they had done their research prior to contacting our team. The girls arrived in the UK on April 11th 2011. They underwent their first surgery on 9th May 2011.

It took longer than expected to arrange the logistics to have the twins transferred over to the UK, arriving in August 2018. The first stage of separation was undertaken on 15th October 2018, with this surgery lasting 10 hours.

After 3 sets of girls, this time we had 2 boys referred to us. They were in good shape and as the charity was up and running, logistics and funding were much easier and quicker to arrange on this occasion. Professor Jeelani first saw them in August 2019 whilst on holiday in Turkey.

In March 2021, we were contacted by the team at the Soroka University Medical Center in Beersheba, Israel. There, we were introduced to our fifth set of craniopagus twins: twin girls born just months before in the local area.

The separation was the most challenging to date as the boys shared vital veins in the brain. At almost four years old, Arthur and Bernardo were also the oldest craniopagus twins with a fused brain to be separated, bringing added complications.

In the Spring of 2023, Gemini Untwined received a second referral from the Instituto Estadual do Cérebro Paulo Niemeyer in Brazil. Heitor and Augusto, conjoined twins weighing a combined 4.2 kg, were the youngest set of twins to be separated by our team of specialists.

Minal and Mirha were born in Pakistan, conjoined at the head and sharing vital blood vessels. Shortly after birth, they were referred to the team at Gemini Untwined.