Headlines
The headline that caught my attention this morning was not the much-vaunted electoral success of the so-called ‘King of the North’ but the one about conjoined twins. Two Nigerian babies were successfully separated last year in the UAE. Mercy and Goodness were joined at the head and a team of medical professionals from more than twenty countries worked together to separate them.
The team used a variety of sophisticated techniques using AI and AR to prepare themselves for over forty hours of surgery, separating skulls, brains, and blood vessels.
Wikimedia informs that AR or augmented reality ”is a form of 3D human–computer interaction that overlays real-time 3D-rendered computer graphics into the real world through a display, such as a handheld device or head-mounted display.”
Mercy and Goodness made a full recovery from the complex, brilliant surgery and are now back home in Nigeria. The lead paedriatic surgeon from Great Ormond Street Hospital, (GOSH) Professor Noor ul Owase Jeelani said, ”This case involved a team split across three continents, helping children from a fourth … it is a beautiful example of how we can produce life-changing outcomes through global collaboration and knowledge-sharing: skill, technology and humanity coming together to defy all odds.”
Now, that is truly something to celebrate, and an example of cooperation we all could aspire to follow.
Very strongly connected twins, who I think were from Papua New Guinea, were successfully separated here, with I think a charity paying for the flights to and from Melbourne, accompanied by their mother, with the surgery and recovery paid for by our medical system. As you would expect, no one complained about the cost to the Australian taxpayers.
ReplyDeleteWhat we are able to do continues to be more and more amazing.
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