When families of conjoined twins are told that separation may be possible, many of them look to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. At the centre of those life-changing operations is Dr. Abdullah Abdulaziz Al Rabeeah, the Saudi paediatric surgeon who has led one of the world’s longest-running and most specialised conjoined twins programmes.
Born on February 23, 1955, Dr. Al Rabeeah studied medicine at King Saud University in Riyadh, earning his Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery degree in 1979. He then moved to Canada to specialise further. In 1986, he completed a Fellowship in General Surgery at the University of Alberta in Edmonton. In 1987, he obtained a Fellowship in Paediatric Surgery from IWK Children’s Hospital at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. That focused training in paediatric surgery would later define his career.
