Ugandan woman, 70, gives birth to twins: doctor

Safina Namukwaya, 70, checks on her twin babies inside an incubator at the Women's Hospital International and Fertility Centre after giving birth in Kampala on December 03, 2023. 70-year-old Safina Namukwaya gave birth to twins on November 29 at a medical facility in the Ugandan capital, where she had received fertility treatment. (Photo by BADRU KATUMBA / AFP)

(AFP) - A 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 AFP.

He said mother and babies -- a boy and a girl -- were still in the care of the Women's Hospital International and Fertility Centre 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 kilometres (75 miles) 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.

She said her first husband had died in 1992, leaving her without children, and she met her current partner in 1996.

But Namukwaya voiced dismay that her partner has not visited her since she came to the hospital for the delivery.

"Maybe he is not happy that I delivered twins because men don't want to know you are carrying more than one child in a womb for fear of may be responsibilities that come with that."

© Agence France-Presse