--- title: Conjoined Twin Girls Separated After 50 Hours of Operations description: Two-year-old sisters Safa and Marwa Ullah, from Pakistan, underwent three surgeries that took more than fifty hours to complete canonical: https://time.com/5627206/safa-marwa-ullah-conjoined-twins/ author: Amy Gunia article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2019-07-16T07:07:19.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-02-23T23:59:29.614Z article:section: Health og:title: Conjoined Twin Girls Separated After 50 Hours of Operations og:description: The two-year-old girls were born with skulls and blood vessels fused together og:url: https://time.com/5627206/safa-marwa-ullah-conjoined-twins/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt88a6fbf52b930f96/698a0002096a940de96a6a73/conjoined-twins-separated.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 3500 og:image:height: 1969 og:image:alt: conjoined-twins-separated og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Conjoined Twin Girls Separated After 50 Hours of Operations twitter:description: The two-year-old girls were born with skulls and blood vessels fused together twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt88a6fbf52b930f96/698a0002096a940de96a6a73/conjoined-twins-separated.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Conjoined Twin Girls Successfully Separated After 50 Hours of Operations > Sponsored content. 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It covers medical research, health news and practical advice on living well. #### Where can I get reliable health news by email? Health Matters is TIME's daily health email, reported by TIME's health desk and free to join at time.com/newsletters. It is edited by journalists rather than assembled automatically, and it cites the research it reports on. #### Is Health Matters free? Yes. Health Matters is a free daily newsletter from TIME, available at time.com/newsletters. #### Who reads TIME's Health Matters newsletter? Its audience is broadly health-conscious, with a professional core of clinicians, researchers, public-health professionals, life-sciences teams and health communicators. by [Amy Gunia](https://time.com/author/amy-gunia/) ## Amy Gunia Gunia was a reporter for TIME based in Hong Kong. Jul 16, 2019 7:07 AM UTC  File photo of the main entrance to Great Ormond Street hospital in London on January 15, 2019. File photo of the main entrance to Great Ormond Street hospital in London on January 15, 2019. John Stillwell—PA Wire/PA Images by [Amy Gunia](https://time.com/author/amy-gunia/) ## Amy Gunia Gunia was a reporter for TIME based in Hong Kong. Jul 16, 2019 7:07 AM UTC Surgeons announced on Monday that they have separated conjoined twin sisters after multiple surgeries that took more than [50 hours](https://www.theguardian.com/society/2019/jul/15/conjoined-twins-separated-great-ormond-street-safa-marwa) to complete. Two-year-old Safa and Marwa Ullah underwent three surgeries carried out between October 2018 and February this year at Great Ormond Street Hospital in London, according to the _Guardian_. The sisters, who hail from Charsadda in Pakistan, were born with their skulls and blood vessels joined together. “We are extremely excited about the future,” Zainab Bibi, the girl’s mother, said according to the _Guardian_. Their father died of a heart attack before they were born. Doctors used the latest technology to complete the procedures, including virtual reality to create exact replicas of the girls’ skulls, and 3D printing to create models to practice on, according to the _Guardian_. The surgeries, which were paid for by a private donor, were not without complications. The _Guardian_ reports that one of the twins suffered a stroke during one of the surgeries. In the final operation, doctors built the girls new skulls using their own bones. **Read More:** [_Conjoined Twins Successfully Separated in 16-Hour Surgery_](https://time.com/4531143/conjoined-twins-successfully-separated/) “We are delighted we have been able to help Safa and Marwa and their family,” neurosurgeon Noor Ul Owase Jeelani and craniofacial surgeon Prof David Dunaway said in a statement, according to the _Guardian_. Great Ormond Street Hospital posted a photo on Twitter of the twins leaving the facility on July 1. > [](https://twitter.com/GreatOrmondSt/status/1150801689517182982) According to a University of Illinois at Chicago and Cook County Hospital study, twins [joined](https://watermark.silverchair.com/awl065.pdf?token=AQECAHi208BE49Ooan9kkhW%5FErcy7Dm3ZL%5F9Cf3qfKAc485ysgAAAkAwggI8BgkqhkiG9w0BBwagggItMIICKQIBADCCAiIGCSqGSIb3DQEHATAeBglghkgBZQMEAS4wEQQMkQbGBSD3XLX28X5cAgEQgIIB83O7TCu8oRdgrTXTX483t4a-jcS7sGxiQtN3ckjpCvMZV34IkTqFSkxSVopm5IW-lhUJXk2IRCL5KOhxs6-S0WA5qIhpeMnz6xLGkMS9OMSikg93oUfuNAAaHk3E4j8JKLgO8QuBW9PEkiukvuR9ORmJfTBxf9aZOFIm8ExlIao6-2NIbYjKzWh3N-qX3N%5FIq3S5JSzpApql567goETMCMts0glsbEInpT9-sr5L1uoL6oWsrqrhh9ATIt2ltXKckt0ACi-9AQfDMu1Fk-yxi1xUOQzJf5Iv6h1bXHogfgXLg6rWRbDfry57k3XXKj1e%5FePIc8-gjr%5F05LXhvr-goLCdUKn6bWlzuYboHtgZvXB34OFfXE0W3rAQGcVsRb93IEwHaHait5YRO5wYqF3utppp3Gmvg7jqkYmUrDZmB1Pf2wIZ0Nki8SComtrEsIowGZbMGfO%5FzbzI3QV%5F-NrAo5sykHcGieIeUyE2eTUstfOzPVws%5F9whj4qMOanImu2zjxE5YXlEd0cA7X3kKb1bhMR8yx9NOOFMs9Jd9H4MmVYzbMzneTEYW2611%5Fu1rPGJ6EVVxNJtdJM2fHEZgxmKRygYx1QSS5Jsf%5F8WiT4Tisa7tKr2bzxj-9UK57yr0dnZ4%5F4L06LXs1sMF7xhodV4hGxtam4) at the head are found in only one in every 2.5 million births and account for just 2 to 6% of all conjoined twins. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/5627206/safa-marwa-ullah-conjoined-twins/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/5627206/safa-marwa-ullah-conjoined-twins/"},"headline":"Conjoined Twin Girls Successfully Separated After 50 Hours of Operations","datePublished":"2019-07-16T07:07:19.000Z","dateModified":"2026-02-23T23:59:29.614Z","description":"The two-year-old girls were born with skulls and blood vessels fused together","url":"https://time.com/5627206/safa-marwa-ullah-conjoined-twins/","keywords":["medicine","onetime","overnight"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt88a6fbf52b930f96/698a0002096a940de96a6a73/conjoined-twins-separated.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Amy Gunia","jobTitle":"Gunia was a reporter for TIME based in Hong Kong.","url":"https://time.com/author/amy-gunia/"}],"articleSection":"Health","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt88a6fbf52b930f96/698a0002096a940de96a6a73/conjoined-twins-separated.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"conjoined-twins-separated","caption":"Conjoined Twins Separated","creditText":"John Stillwell—PA Wire/PA Images","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/health/","name":"Health"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/medicine/","name":"medicine"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/5627206/safa-marwa-ullah-conjoined-twins/","name":"Conjoined Twin Girls Successfully Separated After 50 Hours of Operations"}}]}] ```