OCTOBER 21 • 2021 | 35

A

Muslim doctor from 
London has spoken 
of his pride and joy at 
helping separate Jewish Israeli 
conjoined twins early this 
month, saying it illustrates that 
“from a doctor’s point of view, 
we’re all one.
”
Staff at Soroka University 
Medical Center in Beersheba 
successfully completed the 
operation on the twins con-
joined at the head, and said 
that the babies are now likely to 
grow up to live normal lives.
The medical team managed 
this despite never having per-
formed such a surgery, which 
involved complex on-the-spot 
decisions regarding which 
blood vessel to give to which 
twin and assessing in real-time 
the impact that immediate deci-
sions were having on the func-
tioning of the brains.
Now, the man who brought 
the experience to the table has 
told his story to the Times of 
Israel — and said it should serve 
as a reminder that medicine 
transcends all divisions.
Dr. Noor Ul Owase Jeelani, 
a pediatric neurosurgeon at 
London’s Great Ormond Street 
Hospital, has performed four 

other separation surgeries on 
twins who were conjoined at the 
head with fused skulls, inter-
twined brains and shared blood 
vessels. 
He and his colleague, 
Professor David Dunaway, are 
seen as the world’s experts on 
such cases.
Jeelani directs a nonprofit, 
Gemini Untwined, to plan and 
perform such operations. When 
doctors at Soroka needed to 
prepare for the operation, they 
reached out to him. He agreed, 
for the first time, to operate out-
side the U.K.
He said the fact that a 
Kashmir-born Muslim doctor 
scrubbed up alongside an Israeli 
team to help a Jewish family 

was a reminder of the universal 
nature of medicine.
“It was a fantastic family that 
we helped,
” he said. “
As as I’ve 
said all my life, all children are 
the same, whatever color or 
religion. The distinctions are 
manmade. A child is a child. 
From a doctor’s point of view, 
we’re all one.
”
He found the family’s delight 
at the success of the operation 
deeply moving.
“There was this very special 
moment when the parents were 
just over the moon,
” he said. “I 
have never in my life seen a per-
son smile, cry, be happy and be 
relieved at the same time. The 
mother simply couldn’t believe 
it; we had to pull up a chair to 

help her to calm down.
”
Jeelani’s involvement with 
conjoined twins started in 2017, 
when a neurosurgeon from 
Peshawar, Pakistan, asked him 
to operate on identical con-
joined twins, Safa and Marwa, 
born three months earlier to 
a woman from rural northern 
Pakistan.
He raised the money from 
a Pakistani oil trader called 
Murtaza Lakhani and, with 
Dunaway, successfully per-
formed the operation, after 
hundreds of hours of prepara-
tion. He went on to establish 
Gemini Untwined and perform 
more surgeries.
He worked for months on the 
Israeli surgery.
“We’ve been involved right 
from the start, talking to the 
team in Israel and planning it 
with them over a period of six 
months,
” he said.
Jeelani added: “This latest 
surgery fulfills a key objective of 
our charity, namely, to empower 
local teams abroad to undertake 
this complex work, successfully 
utilizing our experience, knowl-
edge and skills gained over the 
past 15 years with our previous 
four sets of twins.
” 

Muslim doctor helps Israelis separate Jewish conjoined twins.
Medical Heroics

NATHAN JEFFAY TIMES OF ISRAEL

LEFT: Conjoined twins before they were separated at Soroka University Medical Center in Beersheba. RIGHT: The conjoined twins, newly sepa-
rated, look at each other for the first time on Sept. 5. 

 COURTESY SOROKA UNIVERSITY MEDICAL CENTER

 COURTESY SOROKA UNIVERSITY MEDICAL CENTER

 COURTESY NOOR UL OWASE JEELANI

Dr. Noor Ul Owase Jeelani

ERETZ

