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Ugandan woman, 70, delivers twins

Namukwaya also gave birth to a girl in 2020.

Agence France-Presse · Dec 2, 2023, 12:20 AM

Photograph Courtesy of UNICEF

An 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 on Wednesday at a medical facility in the capital Kampala, where she had received fertility treatment.

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

He said mother and babies — a boy and a girl — were still in the care of the Women's Hospital International and Fertility Center 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 "cursed woman" who had previously failed to produce a child.