Over a year after a Malian woman named Halima Cissé gave birth to her nine babies, the world’s only set of nontuplets is now home for the first time.
2022 will end on a high note for Halima Cissé and her family. Nineteen months after Halima, 26, gave birth to five girls and four boys, the first-ever set of surviving nonuplets returned to their home country of Mali, according to Today. The Ministry of Health and Social Development of Mali announced on Dec. 13 that the children – boy Mohammed, Bah, Oumar, and Elhadji, with girls Hawa, Adama, Oumou, Kadidia, and Fatouma – made the trip from Morocco, where they were born, to the family home in Timbuktu, Mali. The country’s Minister of Health and Social Development, Diéminatou Sangaré, greeted the family and posted photos on Facebook showing the nine children in their home.
All nine children, as well as their mother, are healthy. “All this was possible thanks to the mobilization of several doctors in Mali, the Malian authorities, and the medical team of the Aïn Borja clinic in Casablanca,” read the statement from the Ministry of Health and Social Development of Mali. The nine children were delivered by Caesarean section, using a team of ten doctors with twenty-five paramedics assisting.
Cissé was 25 weeks pregnant when Malian doctors sent her to Morocco so she could get the proper care for complicated multiple pregnancies. When they were born, the children only weighed between 1.1 and 2.2 pounds and needed to stay in Morocco for over a year to ensure their survival. Because they thrived, Guinness gave the family the verified World Record for the most living births, surpassing Nadya “Octomom” Suleman, who gave birth to her children in 2009.
At the time, Cissé and her husband, Abdelkader Arby, were only expecting seven children. “Allah blessed us with nine,” Arby said in a Guinness World Records video. “At the beginning, we didn’t have that information. Until we arrived here in Morocco.”
“The glimpse we got from the ultrasound made it seem like there were only seven, so you can imagine our surprise when we discovered nine of them during the birth,” Dr. Youssef Alaoui, the director of the private Moroccan clinic where Cissé gave birth, told TODAY.com in 2021. “Luckily, this didn’t faze us since we have one of the largest neonatal resuscitation services in Morocco. Our teams were ready to welcome these children into the world and able to treat them in the best conditions.
”
“At the Casablanca Ain Borja Clinic, we’ve seen all sorts of complicated medical situations, but I have to say that the birth of nonuplets,” the doctor said. “That’s a first for us.”
