São Paulo – A private clinic in Casablanca, Morocco, was responsible for a delivery that has caught the world’s attention as a woman gave birth to nonuplets. The mother is from Mali, a country near Morocco, and was transferred to the Moroccan healthcare service by her country’s local government, which hadn’t the necessary conditions for the rare event.
The babies, five girls and four boys, were born on May 4 and weighed between 500 grams and 1.1 kilogram. They are under surveillance in the clinic’s neonatal resuscitation department, said Youssef Alaoui, medical director of the clinic, Morocco’s official news agency Maghreb Arabe Press (MAP) reported.
The young mother, Halima Cissé, believed she was expecting seven babies but was caught by surprise when learned that there were two more children during birth. Cissé was admitted to the Moroccan clinic at 25 weeks of pregnancy and gave birth after 30 weeks.
Dr. Alaoui said the team is being cautious. “It is a case that requires all the expertise and all the technicality of the team of the clinic,” he said. According to Alaoui, a multidisciplinary team of over 30 people had been mobilized for the delivery.
Up to the birth of the nonuplets, the previous Guiness record of the highest number of children to survive in a single delivery was held by a United States woman who gave birth to eight children in 2009. Two cases of nonuplets had been recorded, but the children didn’t survive. Cissé’s children will stay in the hospital for two to three months.
Translated by Guilherme Miranda
