A 70-year-old woman in Uganda has given birth to twins after receiving fertility treatment, making her one of the oldest new mothers in the world. Safina Namukwaya gave birth to a boy and a girl on Wednesday via Caesarean section at a hospital in the capital, Kampala, where she had been receiving in vitro fertilization treatment.
“She is healthy. She is talking. She is walking around the hospital if they tell her to walk,” was the message from Arthur Matsiko, spokesperson for the Women’s Hospital International and Fertility Center. Namukwaya had already had a daughter in the same place in 2020. She also had in vitro fertilization.
A 70-Year-Old Woman Has Twins
After welcoming her twins, Namukwaya told the press that her entire process had been a true miracle. The hospital congratulated her, saying she is more than a “medical success; it is about the strength and resilience of the human spirit.” The mother used a donor egg and sperm from her partner for the in vitro fertilization procedure. The babies were born prematurely at 31 weeks and placed in incubators. They are currently stable.
Her pregnancy was difficult as her partner abandoned her when she realized she was going to have twins. “Men don’t like to be told that you have more than one child. Since I joined here, my man has never shown up.”
This is the lady’s second birth in three years. “I took care of other people’s children and watched them grow up and leave me alone. “I wondered who would take care of me when I grew old.” Typically, women go through menopause between the ages of 45 and 55. Fertility declines at this time, but advances in medicine have made it possible for women like Namukwaya to give birth at an older age. In vitro fertilization is one of several techniques. During the process, an egg is removed from a woman’s ovaries and fertilized with sperm in a laboratory. The fertilized egg, called an embryo, is then placed in the woman’s uterus to grow and develop.
This story was written in Spanish by Miguel Fernandez in Cultura Colectiva
