A 70-year-old woman has given birth to twins following IVF (In vitro fertilization) treatment, a hospital in Uganda has said.
Safina Namukwaya delivered a boy and a girl via caesarean at a fertility center in the capital, Kampala.
Ms. Namukwaya, who is one of the oldest women to give birth, told local media it was a “miracle”.
The hospital congratulated her, saying it is more than a “medical success; it’s about the strength and resilience of the human spirit”.
In 2019, a 73-year-old Indian woman gave birth to twins following IVF treatment.
“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 realized she was going to have twins.
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.
“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.
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 fertilization (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 fertilized egg, called an embryo, is then put in a woman’s womb to grow and develop.