A Malian woman, Halima Cisse has given birth to nine babies on Tuesday two more than doctors had detected inside her crowded womb — joining a small pantheon of mothers of nonuplets.
The pregnancy of Halima Cisse, 25, has fascinated the West African nation and attracted the attention of its leaders.
When doctors in March said Cisse needed specialist care, authorities flew her to Morocco, where she gave birth.
“The newborns (five girls and four boys) and the mother are all doing well,” Mali’s health minister, Fanta Siby, said in a statement.
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 through caesarean section.
Before her transfer in late March, she had spent two weeks at a hospital in Bamako, Mali’s capital, according to the country’s health minister.
Nonuplets are extremely rare.
Medical complications in multiple births of this kind often mean that some of the babies do not reach full term.
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 in Texas gave birth to sextuplets – two sets of twin boys and one set of twin girls – in 2019.
