Africa's oldest mum: Woman, 70, gives birth to twins via IVF

A 70-year-old woman in Uganda had a pair of twins after undergoing fertility treatment, becoming one of the world's oldest mothers.

Safina Namukwaya gave birth to a boy and a girl on Nov 29 via caesarean at a fertility centre in the capital, Kampala.

The Women's Hospital International and Fertility Centre believes Namukwaya is Africa's oldest mother, adding in a Facebook post that this was not just about medical success, but it is about the "strength and resilience of the human spirit".

"She's healthy. She's talking. She's walking around if they (medical staff) tell her to walk around the hospital," Associated Press quoted the hospital spokesman Arthur Matsiko as saying.

Namukwaya became pregnant after undergoing in-vitro fertilisation (IVF) using a donor egg and her partner's sperm.

The babies were born premature at 31 weeks and weigh more than 1.3kg.

They were placed in incubators, reported the BBC, quoting the hospital's fertility specialist, Dr Edward Tamale Sali, who added they are currently in a "stable" condition.

Namukwaya also has a three-year-old daughter back at her rural village in the east African nation, who was also conceived at the same hospital via IVF.

She said she had always wanted children after being mocked by others over her childless stage during her younger days.

"I looked after people's children and saw them grow up and leave me alone. I wondered who would take care of me when I grow old," she told Uganda's Daily Monitor newspaper.

For now, Namukwaya will have to raise her children on her own, as her partner abandoned her after finding out she was carrying twins.

"Men don't like to be told that you are carrying more than one child. Ever since I was admitted here (the hospital), my man has never showed up," she said.

Still, she is not too worried as people from her village have expressed their willingness to pitch in.

"Some households will be helping me with washing and the babies because of my advanced age," Namukwaya said.

Typically, women go through menopause at ages 45 to 55, which means they are no longer able to bear children naturally. But advances in medical sciences have made it possible for older women to give birth.

A Spanish woman, Maria del Carmen Bousada de Lara, gained worldwide attention when she became the world's oldest mother at the age of 66 in December 2006 after undergoing IVF treatment.

She died of cancer in July 2009 when her twin sons were two and a half years old, and the children are now under the care of her nephew and his wife.

In 2019, Erramatti Mangayamma, then a 73-year-old farmer from the southern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh, gave birth to twin girls.

In Singapore, a 55-year-old woman gave birth to a baby in 2022, making her only the third woman aged 55 and above to have given birth and registered the birth of a baby since the Immigration and Checkpoints Authority started publishing the annual report on registration of births and deaths in 1989.

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This article was first published in The Straits Times. Permission required for reproduction.