Faith Nyasuguta
Earth’s only nonuplets – nine babies born at the same time – have safely jetted back into Mali, their home country.
The parents and their nine babies arrived at the airport in the capital, Bamako, in the early hours of Tuesday and were welcomed by the incumbent Health Minister Diéminatou Sangaré.
Since leaving the Ain Borja clinic where the babies were born on May 4, 2021, they were living in a medicalised flat in Casablanca, Morocco.
Last year, the babies broke the Guinness World Record for the most children delivered in a single birth to survive.
Previously, the record was held by eight babies born to Nadya Suleman (USA) aka “Octomom” in 2009.
The babies – five girls and four boys – were conceived using in vitro fertilization (IVF) treatment and were delivered by C-section.
Nonuplets are extremely rare, and until the arrival of the Cissé children, no cases had been recorded of nine babies from a single birth surviving for more than a few hours.
They each weighed between 500 g and 1 kg (1.1 and 2.2 lb).
Malian doctors initially thought that Mrs Cissé was carrying seven children, but two more were detected after the Malian government flew her to Ain Borja Clinic in Morocco to receive specialist care.
Shortly after the birth, Mali’s health minister, Dr Fanta Siby, announced that “the newborns and the mother are all doing well.”
In a bid to ensure their survival, the babies were immediately transferred to incubators and remained in the care of the clinic’s paediatric neonatologist Khalil Msaif for a number of months.
The doting husband and father Abdelkader, a sailor in the Malian Navy, remained in Mali during the birth to care for the couple’s three-year-old daughter, Souda.
In October 2021, the sailor was able to reunite with his family and release the maiden images of the healthy babies.
“All of them are getting on very well and are a joy to look after,” Abdelkader said at the time.
Following the risks associated with multiple births and premature births, the babies remained in the care of the clinic even after turning one, a place where their development can be monitored.
