And the twins with their parents won many hearts when they came up from Melbourne to say thanks to Rotarians for the part they played in the life saving operation that separated the tiny girls. The twins, Eusthocia and Eaustina and their parents Henry and Magdalene Bosin are pictured with nursing sister Margaret Konetie from Kokoda, Papua New Guinea who spent five weeks in Yarrawonga, local rotarian Dr Clyde Ronan, Barrie Cooper a director of the Rotary Program, Romac and Ramesh, 15 from Fiji who, thanks to Romac is now walking after being a crippled all his life. (Picture courtesy of Sun Country Photographics).
Eaustina and Eustocia Bosin, the 11-month-old twins from Papua New Guinea, stole the show with a surprise appearance at the 1997 Rotary conference at Mulwala – 18/20 April 1997.
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They were oblivious to the excitement they had created as they giggled and grinned on stage before 800 Rotarians who were ecstatic to see the former Siamese twins happy and healthy.
The surprise visit marked the first day of the three-day conference.
The twins and their parents, Henry and Magdalene Bosin, visited to thank the Rotarians for their part in the life-saving operation that separated their daughters in 1996.
The twins that stopped a nation: TV personality and sports commentator Max ‘Tangles’ Walker told the Rotary Conference at Mulwala on Friday 18 April, 1997 that the separation of the Siamese twins from Papua New Guinea at the Royal Children’s Hospital, Melbourne in 1996 was “a miracle that stopped the nation”.
Rotary Overseas Medical Aid for Children was the program responsible for helping the Bosins to seek the urgent medical treatment needed when the twins were born in Port Moresby on May 15, 1996.
The chief executive of the children’s medical aid program, Mr Barrie Cooper, spoke of how the organisation had organised help for the Bosin family.
“The twins were joined from the top of their breastbone to the belly-button, and they shared a liver,” Mr Cooper said.
“We knew that if they weren’t separated one of them would die, but thanks to the amazing skills of the surgeons at the hospital we had a happy ending” Barrie Cooper said.
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