Co-joined Zimbabwe twins head home

TORONTO, July 20 (UPI) -- Staff at Toronto's Hospital for Sick Children held a farewell party for twins from Zimbabwe who once were joined at the abdomen and shared a liver.

Hospital workers celebrated with the twin boys, Tinashe and Tintenda, and their mother Tuesday as they prepared to return to the African nation in time for the twins' first birthday, the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. reported.

Twenty-five doctors and nurses spent five hours in March separating the co-joined twins, who came to the hospital's attention last July when Canadian doctors delivered them in a rural area of Zimbabwe.

The Herbie Fund, established in 1979 by Toronto philanthropist Paul Godfrey and his wife in honor of New York infant Herbie Quinones, paid the twins' travel costs.

The boys also underwent surgeries to repair cleft lips and palates.