Serra told The Associated Press on Tuesday that the Singapore doctors used the 3-D images to consult with a Johns Hopkins' Siamese twins expert, Dr. Benjamin Carson, before separating Ganga and Jamuna. Siamese twins joined at the head are very rare, occurring once in 2 million live births, according to Goh. Successful separations are even more uncommon. A similar operation was successfully performed in South Africa in 1997. Ganga and Jamuna, the twins in the Singapore surgery, are the only children of a poor couple from the remote Nepalese mountain village of Khalanga, where Maoist guerrillas are active.
Doctors say the girls have distinct personalities.
Ganga, who has a cleft palate, is feistier and always hungry, while Jamuna is more shy. The girls' mother, Sandhya, is a kindergarten teacher and their father, Bushan, helps his father in a small business. The couple, who are in their 20s, kept almost constant vigil at the hospital during the operation with brief breaks to pray at a Hindu temple. A surgeon in Nepal referred the family to doctors in Singapore, a wealthy Southeast Asian city-state known for its advanced medical facilities. Before the surgery, doctors rehearsed the procedure in virtual reality using a three-dimensional imaging system developed in Singapore.