70-year-old Ugandan gives birth to twins

World

Published: 2023-12-03 21:54

Last Updated: 2024-04-27 19:02


70-year-old Ugandan gives birth to twins
70-year-old Ugandan gives birth to twins

A Ugandan woman aged 70 has given birth to twins, her doctor said Thursday, in what the mother hailed as a miracle.

Safina Namukwaya described her joy at the arrival of the twins who were born Wednesday at a medical facility in the capital Kampala, where she had received fertility treatment.

"This is an extraordinary achievement, delivering twins to Africa's oldest mother at 70 years," Doctor Edward Tamale Sali, who supervised her pregnancy and delivery, told AFP.

He said the mother and babies -- a boy and a girl -- were still in the care of the Women's Hospital International and Fertility Centre that he founded, but were in good health.

"There is no way to express my joy at this moment," said Namukwaya, who lives in the rural of Masaka about 120 kilometers west of Kampala.

"At 70 years when I'm considered weak, unable to get pregnant and deliver, or look after a baby, and here is a miracle of the twins," she told AFP by phone.

Namukwaya said she previously gave birth to a girl in 2020, after being mocked as a "cursed woman" who had previously failed to produce a child.

She said her first husband had died in 1992, leaving her without children, and she met her current partner in 1996.

But Namukwaya voiced dismay that her partner has not visited her since she came to the hospital for the delivery.

"Maybe he is not happy that I delivered twins because men don't want to know you are carrying more than one child in a womb for fear of maybe responsibilities that come with that."