Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al Rabeeah

Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al Rabeeah, born in Mecca on 23 February 1955, is a Saudi pediatric surgeon who also held senior posts in government. He took his medical degree at King Saud University in Riyadh in 1979, was licensed to practise in 1981, and completed fellowships in general surgery at the University of Alberta Hospital in Edmonton and in pediatric surgery at the IWK Hospital for Children in Halifax, Nova Scotia. He is best known for leading the Saudi national team that separates conjoined twins. His first separation of Saudi twin girls took place at King Faisal Specialist Hospital and Research Centre in Riyadh in December 1990, and in September 2002 he operated on the Malaysian twins Ahmed and Mohammed in a procedure that lasted 23.5 hours and ended in a successful separation. His Wikipedia article reports that since 1996 he and the national team have reviewed 99 cases and carried out 42 successful separations for patients from 19 countries. He served as Saudi Minister of Health from 14 February 2009 to 21 April 2014, and later became Supervisor General of the relief agency KSrelief and an adviser to the Royal Court.