Nida and Hira Jamal were born as conjoined twins born in Karachi, Pakistan. Society shuns them. Their country’s medical facilities cannot help them. Their family is desperate, poor and isolated. Their loving parents pray ceaselessly for a miracle. When Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto took up their cause, the Jamals were convinced their prayers were answered.

Separate Lives is the incredible inside story of the twins arrival in Canada for a pioneering operation that will give them a chance at a new life.

Dr. Harold Hoffman, chief paediatric neurosurgeon at Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children, had been waiting for this moment all his life. He knew that if anyone could separate these girls, he could. But the preliminary examinations and tests also told him it would be a lot more complicated than anyone could ever have imagined.

Months after the Jamals arrival in Toronto, Dr. Hoffman and his 23 member medical team, enter the operating theatre. The team has planned every stage of the operation with military precision. But Dr. Hoffman finds he must improvise on the operating table to save Nida and Hira’s lives. Then, in a wondrous moment, the girls are separated, becoming two distinct beings.

The operation is a triumph but the aftermath turns tragic. Hira flourishes, but her twin’s vital signs grow weaker day by day. Medicine has given life but it has also taken life.

“This is not just an extraordinary medical story,” says producer/co-director, Robert Lang. “It’s the story of great moral courage. Seeing the astonishing resilience of body and soul through adversity is a wonder and an inspiration.”

Striking an emotional chord with all those who saw it, Separate Lives took medical programming in a new direction – a forerunner of the many non-fiction medical series currently seen on North American TV screens.

Producer
ROBERT LANG

Directors
ROBERT LANG
DEBORAH MAGIDSON

Writer
DEBORAH MAGIDSON

Camera
JOAN HUTTON

Editor
MIKE FULLER