<i>The other of the twins also dies</i>
They were born only to be abandoned and die in oblivion.
The twin brothers born premature on Thursday were treated at the Dhaka Medical College Hospital (DMCH) for respiratory problems. They had a very short span of life as one of them died within a couple of hours while the other passed away in 36 hours.
When the first baby died at about 2:00am on Friday, doctors at the hospital's Special Care Baby Unit (SCBU) tried their best to save the other. But all their efforts ended around 1:30am yesterday.
Unidentified persons left the babies wrapped with two separate lungis on the busy corridor of the emergency unit. A patient first discovered the twins by hearing their cries at around 1:30pm Thursday.
They might have been born some eight hours before they were found, the duty doctor at the unit, Dr Shifat, told The Daily Star on the day.
The hospital authorities said the babies were not born at the DMCH.
“I saw the twins kept in a corner of the corridor. They were moaning,” said Amena Khatun, a special attendant (Aya) at the emergency unit. “Although wrapped with lungis, the faces of the babies were not covered so that they could breathe,” she said.
Nobody knows why they were abandoned, but the hospital authorities believe their parents might have been too poor to bring them up.
Doctors said the twins were premature as they were born after 32 to 33 weeks of conception. One of them weighed 1.2kg and the other 1.3kg.
The incident drew massive media attention as well as curiosity among patients and visitors at the hospital. Some of the visitors were keen to adopt the babies.
But that was not to be.
The autopsy of the baby who died on Friday was done yesterday while that of the other will be conducted today.
The bodies will be handed over to Anjuman Mofidul Islam for burial.
DMCH director Brig Gen Shahidul Haq Mollik said the premature-born twins died as they had been suffering from pneumonia. “We did everything possible to save them, but both were in critical condition,” he told The Daily Star.
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