IRAN/SINGAPORE: FUNERAL PROCESSION HELD AT SHIRAZ AIRPORT FOR IRANIAN CONJOINED TWINS LALEH AND LADEN BIJANI

Record ID: 646512

  • Title: IRAN/SINGAPORE: FUNERAL PROCESSION HELD AT SHIRAZ AIRPORT FOR IRANIAN CONJOINED TWINS LALEH AND LADEN BIJANI
  • Date: 12th July 2003
  • Summary: (W4) SINGAPORE (FILE) (REUTERS) SV'S: TWINS WALKING OUT OF NEWS CONFERENCE (2 SHOTS) 35 Initials Script is copyright Reuters Limited. All rights reserved
  • Embargoed: 27th July 2003 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: SHIRAZ AND VARIOUS LOCATIONS, IRAN / SINGAPORE
  • City:
  • Country: Singapore Iran, Islamic Republic of
  • Topics: Health
  • Reuters ID: LVA6FV15JY57VW56AAVSFKRR843M
  • Story Text: Iranians have paid a last tribute to the conjoined twins who did no resist surgery and died this week in Sinagapore.
    A funeral procession was held on Saturday (July 12) at Shiraz airport where the bodies of twin sisters Laleh and Ladan Bijani arrived in their final journey before the burial ceremony in their hometown of Lohraso in Iran.
    Residents in the provincial capital city of southern Fars province bid the once conjoined twin sisters and emotional farewell.
    Laleh and Ladan Bijani died on Tuesday (July 8), 90 minutes apart, from severe blood loss in the final stages of a marathon operation to separate their joined brains that began on Sunday.
    The two women were joined at the head, something that only occurs once in every two million live births. A separation operation had never been tried on adults.
    The coffins were draped in black sheets embroidered with gold during the procession along the streets attended by their parents, Dadollah Bijani and Maryam Safari and other relatives.
    The surgeons who operated on the twins initially tried to convince them not to have an operation to separate their fused heads, but the women insisted.
    In an interview broadcast on Friday (July 11), Ben Carson, a U.S. doctor from the team, said he never thought the operation had a reasonable chance of success. He added that members of the surgical team that operated on the women made "a great deal of effort" to try to talk them out of it beforehand.
    The twins were, however determined to undergo the ill-fated surgery so they could live separate lives. Fused in life, they finally achieved their dream of separation only in death.
  • Copyright Holder: FILE REUTERS (CAN SELL)
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