"Our wish is that the two children return to Cameroon before the end of the year if it is possible," said at a press conference Professor Pierre-Yves Mure, deputy head of department for pediatric surgery at the end of the year. Mother-Child Hospital of Bron, near Lyon.
Born on November 6, 2018 in Cameroon, Bissie and Eyenga Merveille, two Siamese sisters who were connected by the abdomen with a part of the liver in common, were separated on November 13 during a "very technical" operation that lasted five hours. The date of their return will depend on the probable surgical intervention that one of them still has, who suffers from a "relatively severe heart disease".
Physical and psychological separation
In the operating room, at the time of their separation, "there was not a word but everyone understood each other, we had done our job and there were some tears" of emotion at the end, described the surgeon. When they woke up, the two sisters were placed in a single bed where they "resumed their natural position as before their operation", according to the resuscitator, Solène Rémy. "Little by little, we were able to separate them physically and psychologically."
For the child psychiatrist Hugues Desombre, "it's a second birth for them, in a way, and it's a way of everyday life". Alain Deloche, founder of the Chaîne de l'Espoir who provides logistics around the arrival of girls in France, for his part has underlined "the mysterious link between these two little beings". The girls, as well as their mother, are still in the hospital, in a protected room, one being administratively out of hospital, while the most fragile still requires renutrition care and will undergo next week additional examinations in connection with his cardiac malformation, said Professor Mure.