By Baba Ahmed and Tarik El Barakah - The Associated Press
BAMAKO, Mali— A Malian woman gave birth to nine babies in a single cesarean delivery, even though she only hoped to have seven, the African country's health minister and the Moroccan clinic where the nonuplets were born reported.
This is the first time in recorded history that a woman gives birth to nine babies at the same time, and they all survive.
The five girls, the four boys and the mother "are doing well
," Mali's health minister said in a statement.
The 25-year-old woman, identified as Halima Cisse, gave birth to the babies on Tuesday following a caesarean section in Morocco after being sent there for special care, Mali's top health official announced.
General view of the room for premature babies where the nine babies born together are kept in the private clinic of Ain Borja, in Casablanca, Morocco.
The babies were photographed while moving their feet and hands in incubators at the Ain Borja private clinic in Casablanca.
The medical staff have monitored his health status regularly in the neonatal ward of the center.
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Cisse only expected to have seven babies.
Malian doctors, by order of the Government, sent her to Morocco for delivery, as hospitals in Mali, one of the poorest countries in the world, are ill equipped to provide adequate care for exceptional situations such as multiple pregnancies.
Possible world record
The director of the Casablanca clinic, Youssef Alaoui, told Moroccan state television that they had been contacted by Malian doctors about the case a month and a half ago.
No one at the hospital was expecting the nine babies, he said.
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Cisse gave birth prematurely at 30 weeks and is now in stable condition after heavy bleeding for which she received a blood transfusion, she said.
The Guinness Book of World Records said in an email to
The Associated Press
on Wednesday that
the current record for the largest multiple births with all live babies is eight
, and that it is verifying birth in Morocco.
The current Guinness record holder is the American Nadya Suleman, who gave birth to eight premature but healthy children in 2009.
Fertility treatments
Alaoui, the director of the clinic, said that, as far as he knew, Cisse had not used fertility treatments.
The Malian Ministry of Health did not provide any other information on the pregnancy or caesarean section.
A Moroccan nurse cares for one of nine protected babies in an incubator in the maternity ward of Ain Borja's private clinic in Casablanca, Morocco, Wednesday, May 5, 2021.
Yacoub Khalaf, professor of reproductive medicine at King's College London, said such births would be extraordinarily unlikely without fertility treatment and pointed out the dangers involved in such multiple births.
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The mother "was at serious risk of losing her uterus or losing her life," she
said.
Babies “could suffer physical and mental disabilities.
The risk of cerebral palsy is astronomically higher. "
The doctor urged more awareness around the world about fertility treatments and the risks and costs of having so many premature babies at the same time.
