•Safina Namukwaya
A septuagenarian Ugandan woman has been delivered of twins after becoming pregnant through In Vitro Fertilization or IVF treatment, thus, becoming the oldest woman in Africa to give birth, according to the healthcare facility that handled the case.
The hospital – the Women’s Hospital International and Fertility Centre in the Ugandan capital, Kampala, said Safina Namukwaya delivered a boy and a girl on Wednesday, November 29, 2023.
“This story isn’t just about medical success; it’s about the strength and resilience of the human spirit,” the hospital said on Facebook, following Namukwaya’s successful caesarean delivery on Wednesday.
Namukwaya told privately owned NTV channel that it was her second delivery in three years, after she gave birth to a girl in 2020.
She added that she had experienced multiple difficulties during the pregnancy, including desertion by the children’s father.
“Men don’t like to be told that you are carrying more than one child. Ever since I was admitted here, my man has never showed up,” she said.
Namukwaya said she did not know how she would manage to raise the children, but was happy to have them after years of enduring stigma and ridicule for being childless.
“One time, a very young boy heckled at me saying I had been cursed by my mother to die without a child,” she said.
“We’ve achieved the extraordinary – delivering twins to Africa’s oldest mother aged 70!” the Women’s Hospital International and Fertility Centre (WHI&FC) posted on its Facebook page.
It said she had delivered the babies on Wednesday just after midday, adding: “Mother and babies are all well.”
Ms Namukwaya told Uganda’s Daily Monitor newspaper that her pregnancy had been difficult as her partner abandoned her when he realised she was going to have twins.
“Men don’t like to be told that you are carrying more than one child. Ever since I was admitted here, my man has never showed up,” she said.
This is Ms Namukwaya’s second delivery in three years. She gave birth to a baby girl in 2020.
She said she had wanted to have children after she was mocked for being childless.
“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 is quoted as saying.
It is not clear whether she used a donor egg or one of her own that was frozen and stored when she was younger.
Typically women go through menopause between the ages of 45 and 55. Fertility drops around this time but advances in medicine have made it possible for them to give birth.
In-vitro fertilisation (IVF) is one of several techniques. During the process an egg is removed from a woman’s ovaries and fertilised with sperm in a laboratory.
The fertilised egg, called an embryo, is then put in a woman’s womb to grow and develop
Credit: BBC news
