A Malian woman has given birth to 9 babies
A young woman in Mali gave birth to nine babies on Tuesday - joining a very rare club of mothers to nonuplets. The miraculous pregnancy of 25-year-old Halima Cisse has fascinated the people of the West African country. In fact, when doctors in March advised Cisse needed specialist care, authorities flew her to Morocco, where she gave birth. Here are more details on this.
"The newborns - five girls and four boys - and the mother are all doing well," Mali's Health Minister, Fanta Siby, told AFP. Cisse and her babies are expected to return home in a few weeks, she added. Siby also 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 initially believed to have been carrying septuplets - a set of seven babies born at once. That was because doctors had missed two babies in ultrasound examinations conducted in both Mali and Morocco, according to a statement by Mali's Health Ministry. All the nine babies were delivered by caesarean section, reports say.
Nonuplets are extremely rare. Further, medical complications in such births mean that some of the babies may not survive until full term. The first reported set of nonuplets was in Sydney, Australia in the 1970s. However, none of the babies could survive. In 2009, a woman in the United States successfully gave birth to octuplets, with all the eight babies surviving past birth.
