A Malian woman has given birth to nine babies, joining a small group of mothers of nonuplets, according to Mali’s government.
The pregnancy of Halima Cisse, 25, fascinated the country and attracted the attention of its leaders.
When doctors in March said Cisse needed specialist care, authorities flew her to Morocco, where on Tuesday, she gave birth to five girls and four boys by caesarean section.
“The newborns and the mother are all doing well,” Mali’s health minister Fanta Siby said in a statement, adding they are due to return home in a few weeks’ time.
Cisse was expected to give birth to septuplets (seven babies), according to ultrasounds conducted in Morocco and Mali that missed two of the babies.
A woman who had eight babies in the US in 2009 holds the Guinness World Record for the most children delivered at a single birth to survive.
Two sets of nonuplets have previously been recorded – one born to a woman in Australia in 1971 and another to a woman in Malaysia in 1999 – but none of the babies survived more than a few days.
World record holder Nadya Suleman’s octuplets have grown up and are now 12 years old. She conceived them through in vitro fertilisation.
