- Halima Cisse, 25, gave birth to five girls and four boys in Morocco on Tuesday
- She was expected to give birth to seven babies, an ultrasound originally showed
A Malian woman has given birth to nine babies in a world record multiple birth after medics missed two on her scans and told her she would have seven.
Halima Cisse, 25, and all five girls and four boys are ‘doing fine’ after a cesarean section was carried out successfully in Morocco, officials said.
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, from Timbuktu in the north of the West African country, was flown 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.
Halima Cisse (pictured with the team that helped deliver her babies), 25, and all five girls and four boys are ‘doing fine’ after a cesarean section in Morocco
Ms Cisse spent two weeks in Point G Hospital in Bamako, Mali’s capital, before she was transferred to Morocco thanks to the intervention of Mali’s President of Transition Bah N’Daw.
She was admitted to a Moroccan clinic on March 20, and spent over six weeks in hospital before reportedly giving birth on Tuesday (May 4).
Mali’s health ministry said in a statement that Cisse had given birth to five girls and four boys by Caesarean section.
‘The newborns (five girls and four boys) and the mother are all doing well,’ Mali’s health minister, Fanta Siby, said in a statement.
The minister added 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.
Siby offered her congratulations to ‘the medical teams of Mali and Morocco, whose professionalism is at the origin of the happy outcome of this pregnancy’.
Cisse was expected to give birth to seven babies, according to ultrasounds conducted in Morocco and Mali that missed two of the siblings.
All were delivered by caesarean section.
Cases of women successfully carrying septuplets to term are rare – and nonuplets even rarer – due to the strain multiple babies can put on the mother’s body.
Ms Cisse was flown to Morocco to make sure the babies (pictured) were delivered safely after the pregnancy attracted the attention of the West African nation’s leaders
Ms Cisse’s five daughters and four sons were all ‘doing well’, as was the mother, authorities said
Ms Cisse was flown from the north of the poor West African state to Morocco to make sure the babies were delivered safely after the pregnancy attracted the attention of the West African nation’s leaders. Pictured: Two of the babies in incubators
Medical complications in multiple births of this kind often mean that some of the babies do not reach full term.
The first recorded case of nonuplets came in Sydney in the 1970s, although sadly none of the babies survived, according to The Independent.
Another set of nonuplets were born on 26 March 1999, in Malaysia to Zurina Mat Saad. Like the case in the 1970s, none of the babies survived longer than six hours.
In 2009, a woman in the US gave birth to octuplets – eight babies – with all surviving past birth, and by 2019, all had celebrated their tenth birthday.
Nadya Suleman, or ‘Octomom’ made headlines in the United States on January 26, 2009, when she gave birth to six boys and two girls in California.
Nadya Suleman, or ‘Octomom’ made headlines in the United States on January 26, 2009, when she gave birth to six boys and two girls in California.
The babies were all a result of IVF treatment, and were nine weeks premature when they were delivered by Caesarean section.
To this day. the octuplets are still the only full set of eight babies born alive in the United States, and after one week after their birth they surpassed the previous worldwide survival rate for octuplets.
Before the record-breaking birth, Suleman already had six children, who were also conceived via IVF treatment.
The doctor who delivered the embryos, and who implanted twelve embryos in Suleman’s womb, had his license revoked in 2011 after charges were brought against him in relation to the octuplet’s conception.
In a more recent case, a woman in Texas gave birth to sextuplets – two sets of twin boys and one pair of twin girls – in 2019.
Source: Daily Mail
