One year ago to the day, conjoined twins Dior and Thiaba underwent a 40-hour operation in Monza, Italy, marking the final stage of a long and complex international medical effort supported by Fondation MRD and partner institutions across Europe.
The procedure followed 14 months of preparation involving multidisciplinary teams of neurosurgeons, maxillofacial surgeons, anaesthetists, and intensive care specialists. The rarity and severity of the twins’ condition meant their treatment necessitated extensive planning and coordination between hospitals as well as continuous reassessment as the twins’ condition evolved.
Tragically, Thiaba did not survive the operation. In the period leading up to surgery, her condition had become increasingly fragile, and she grew ever more dependent on her sister. The medical consensus remained that surgery offered the only possible chance of survival for either child. Dior, however, survived, and has since continued her recovery and rehabilitation in Italy, making steady and encouraging progress under specialist care that would have once seemed impossible.
The case remains medically exceptional, but it reflects a difficult truth: access to highly specialised, time-sensitive healthcare is still shockingly unevenly distributed. For rare conditions, outcomes are often shaped as much by geography and resources as by what medicine is capable of achieving.
Fondation MRD, established in 2022, works to help address these disparities by supporting healthcare access and infrastructure development in Senegal, alongside wider community initiatives focused on wellbeing, education and social support. The Foundation’s work reflects the belief that access to care should not depend on where a person is born.
One year on, Dior’s recovery stands as testament to what coordinated international medical collaboration can achieve but also serves as a reminder of the continued need to strengthen and expand access to advanced care globally, so that more patients facing rare and complex conditions have a chance of the treatment they so desperately need.