African woman gives birth to nonuplets

A 25-year-old Malian woman has given birth to nine babies – five girls and four boys – two more than doctors had detected during scans.

Halima Cisse gave birth to the nonuplets in Morocco, where the Malian government had flown her for specialist care.

“I’m very happy,” her husband told the BBC. “My wife and the babies are doing well.”

Halima’s pregnancy became a subject of fascination in Mali, even when it was thought she was only carrying septuplets, Reuters news agency reports.

Doctors in the West African nation had been concerned for her welfare and the chances of the babies’ survival, so the government intervened.

After a two-week stay in a hospital in Mali’s capital, Bamako, the decision was made to move Halima to Morocco, where she could expect better care.

After five weeks at the Moroccan clinic, she gave birth by Caesarean section on Tuesday.

Fanta Siby, Mali’s health minister, congratulated the medical teams in Mali and Morocco for the “happy outcome”.

Her husband, Adjudant Kader Arby, is still at home in Mali with the couple’s older daughter, but he says he has been in constant touch with his wife in Morocco and is not worried about the family’s future.

“God gave us these children. He is the one to decide what will happen to them. I’m not worried about that. When the almighty does something, he knows why,” he told BBC Afrique.

He says the family have been overwhelmed by the support they have received.

“Everybody called me! Everybody called! The Malian authorities called expressing their joy. I thank them. Even the president called me!”

The mother and her nine new babies are expected to return home in several weeks.

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.

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.