Australian surgeons plan to conduct surgery to separate two Bhutan twins

Conjoined 14-month-old twins Nima and Dawa from Bhutan have arrived in the Australian city of Melbourne where doctors are planning complex surgery to separate them.

Elizabeth Lodge is the chief executive of the Children First Foundation that brought the girls and their mother from their Himalayan kingdom home. She said after the family arrived in Melbourne on Tuesday that they were looking forward to the separation at Royal Children's Hospital.

The girls are connected at the chest and share a liver.

Lodge told reporters that the mother had said the girls were getting frustrated with each other and were losing weight.

They must undergo further scans to determine the surgical plan and its timing, with doctors predicting the procedure, might take up to eight hours.