Rashid Hassan

RIYADH: The World Health Organization, a specialized agency of the UN responsible for international public health, praised the Saudi Crisis and Disaster Management Center’s readiness to respond and prevent crises and disasters before they occur.

“A delegation from the WHO’s regional office accompanied by a Yemeni health ministry team visited the health emergency operation center in Riyadh on Thursday,” said the health ministry on Friday.

The Saudi health ministry said that the visiting delegation was briefed on the center’s experiences in operations, emergency preparedness and navigation of data management systems.

The visit comes within the WHO initiative to train personnel at the Yemeni Emergency Operations Center, and was aimed at transferring know-how to Yemeni counterparts.

WHO officially accredited the Kingdom’s first health crisis and disaster management center in the Eastern Mediterranean region in October 2021.

The center’s role is to respond and prevent crises and disasters before they occur. It serves as the operations and control center for the implementation of prevention programs across the Kingdom.

The center is to facilitate government communication to 20 other centers across the Kingdom.

Meanwhile, under the directive of King Salman, the surgical team for the Saudi conjoined twins program successfully separated Yemeni twins Mawaddah and Rahma at the King Abdullah Specialized Children’s Hospital, National Guard Health Affairs, Riyadh.

The babies, who were born on March 13, 2022, were conjoined at the lower chest and abdomen, and also shared a liver.

Dr. Abdullah Al-Rabeeah, the head of the surgical team, announced the successful procedure, which was the 52nd separation conducted during the 32 years of the Saudi conjoined twins program.

Al-Rabeeah said that several remarkable successes were achieved during this particular procedure. The twins’ recovery time (between completion of surgery and awakening from anesthesia) was shorter than in any previous separation surgery conducted by the team. Also, the twins did not require blood transfusions during the procedure, and although the procedure was expected to take more than 11 hours, the surgical duration was only 5 hours.

A team of 28 Saudi doctors and specialists participated in the separation, which went smoothly, with no complications.

Al-Rabeeah declared the twins to be in very good condition following surgery.

To date, the Saudi conjoined twins program has reviewed 124 cases referred from 23 countries.

The Saudi conjoined twins program is considered one of the leading programs of its kind in the world.

The parents of the twins were overwhelmed by the success of the separation, and their twins responded well after the operation.

Father of the twins, Hudhayfa bin Abdullah Noman, expressed his thanks to the Saudi leadership for the generous humanitarian gesture of sponsoring the costs involved in the separation.

He also thanked the highly skilled medical team for giving his daughters the best possible chance to live full, happy lives.