Antananarivo  - Madagascar's two-month-old conjoined twin girls are destined to be joined for life after surgeons decided it was too risky to separate them, local media reported Friday.

Kambana und Sova were born in the remote village of Sahavavy in the east of the impoverished Indian Ocean island on May 10. They are joined in the area of the genitalia and anus.

Their combined weight at birth was 3.6 kilogrammes.

"A separation is impossible, today and also later," Lalatiana Andriamanarivo, a surgeon at Toamasina hospital, was quoted by local media Friday as telling a press conference. The little girls shared several vital organs meaning a separation would endanger their lives, he said.

Andriamanarivo said the decision was taken in consultation with surgeons at Necker children's hospital in Paris, where he was part of a team of surgeons that successfully separated Siamese twin Madagascan boys Imahagaga und Imahalatsa at eight months in February.

The two boys from southern Madagascar were attached at the lungs and stomach and also shared a liver.

They have since returned home and are in good health.

Kambana und Sova, who now weigh 5.4 kilogrammes, are being cared for at HJRA general hospital in the capital Antananarivo, where they are listed in stable condition.

Their mother, 37-year-old Josie Aurette, who already had seven other children, walked for four days after giving birth to the twins to bring them to hospital in Toamasina on the east coast. Both she and her husband are subsistence farmers.

Conjoined twins are very rare, occurring only in around one in every 100,000 pregnancies. In 90 per cent of cases, the twins are girls.

The condition arises when the egg from which identical twins develop fails to divide properly.

Separating conjoined twins can be very difficult, especially where they share a heart or a head.(dpa)