A woman in Mali has given birth to nine babies – two more than doctors had detected inside her womb – according to the country’s health ministry, joining a small pantheon of mothers of nonuplets.
The pregnancy of Halima Cisse has fascinated the west African nation and attracted the attention of its leaders. When doctors in March said Cisse needed specialist care, the country’s transitional leader, Bah Ndaw, ordered that she be sent to Morocco, where she gave birth to five girls and four boys, according to Mali’s health ministry.
The newborns who include five girls and four boys were delivered via cesarean section was carried out successfully in Morocco, officials said.
“The mother and babies are doing well so far,” Mali’s health minister, Fanta Siby, told Agence France-Presse, adding that she had been kept informed by the Malian doctor who accompanied Cisse to Morocco.
They are due to return home in several weeks’ time, she added.
Should all nine babies survive, the case would break the current world record set by 'Octomum' Nadya Suleman in 2009, who gave birth to eight babies that survived.
Ms Cisse was flown from the north of the poor West African state to Morocco in March to make sure the babies were delivered safely after the pregnancy attracted the attention of the West African nation's leaders.
According to Mali 24, doctors in the country estimated that there was a less than 50 percent chance that a single one of the nine fetuses would survive the birth.
It is currently unclear if her pregnancy was due to In vitro fertilization (IVF) treatment, which is one of the more common causes of multiple births, how much the babies weigh, or how far along she was in her pregnancy.
The first recorded set on nonuplets was in Sydney in the 1970s. None of the babies survived.
Back in 2009, a woman gave birth to octuplets in the US, with all eight babies surviving past birth.
More recently, a woman inTexas gave birth to sextuplets - two sets of twin boys and one set of twin girls - in 2019.
