Baby Sebit was delivered with a deformed twin sibling attached to his buttocks. The doctor says the baby can be saved by cutting off the deformity through a surgical operation. |Photo credit: Taban

Mother Florence and her husband Alison Peter, a humble couple living quietly in the makeshift Don Bosco Camp in Sherikat, vividly recall the day they waited to cuddle another bouncing bundle of joy, their fifth baby.

Fatigued by labor pains, Florence finally heaved a thigh of relief after welcoming a seemingly healthy baby boy.

However, to their shock and dismay, the nurse found a strange shape on one backside of the baby. It is a pair of tiny finger-like hands and a head. That’s all.

The nurse said the baby were supposedly twins, but the other twin brother or sister, was nothing but a tiny head and hands.

“When we saw the baby like that, we took him to Juba teaching hospital, and they said they can’t do the operation. They told us to take the baby to doctor Thomas,” Florence told Eye Radio.

Despite being penniless and living in one of the most impoverished and forsaken IDPs camps in the country, Lasu and Kiden didn’t back down from looking for help to save the live of little Sebit.

After they reached out to the specialist they were referred to, he was nowhere to be found.

“We did not found him because it was Saturday and his is not working on Saturday’s, and we want back to juba hospital on Monday, and they referred us to Giada hospital and they said they can do the operation but they want 240,000ssp without the medicine,’’ said the mother.

After an ultrasound and several other scans, the doctor hypothesized that the healthy child must be detached from the deformed one, at the sum of 240,000 pounds.

But they have no such amount of money.

The couple then requested help from the local organization, Humanitarian Development Consortium (HDC), which promised to do something.

“When they saw the bill of operation, they said they can’t help us because they can only give between 50 to 100 US dollars. They took us to Usura-tuna hospital, and then to Al Sabah hospital where we spent 9 days, from there they traveled to Kampala, under the usura-tuna supervision,” said the mother.

The referral to Uganda did not yield helpful results after the insurance hospital told them the operation is too expensive to perform.

“I don’t feel happy with the way the baby is staying with a lot of discomfort. Even the other part of his body have wounds, and the baby is always crying,” she said.

“I don’t have any way to get money for the baby to operate, I took the baby to usura-tuna hospital, they cleaned the wound and gave us medicine to apply it on the wound, and up to now the wound didn’t heal and the doctor did not told us the cause of it,’’ she added with tears blotted eyes.

The father, Alison Peter is now appealing to well wishers, the government or any humanitarian organizations to help contribute money for the surgery.

“We struggled a lot, but without a solution and we are leaving in a camp, there is no way. That the reason I am appealing to the people who would listen to us from the government, NGO, and well-wishers and they have craving in their hearts, to turn and help the baby.’’

Cases of child deformities like in Sebit’s case, are rarely reported in the areas far away from the oilfields, and it is not clear what cause the condition.