MEDICAL BAG
A multiple happy event in Morocco and a linguistic transformation from 1985
MALIAN NONUPLETS
On 4 May Halima Cisse, from Timbuktu in Mali, gave birth to nine babies in a Moroccan hospital where the Malian government had sent her for specialist care – they were expecting seven babies, but the ultrasound scan missed two. Cisse was admitted to the hospital at 25 weeks, and the medics managed to extend her pregnancy to 30 weeks before she gave birth via cæsarean section. The nonuplets, five girls and four boys, weighed between 500g and 1kg (1.1lb and 2.2lb) and all survived but are expected to remain in incubators for two or three months.
“The mother and babies are doing well so far,” Mali’s health minister, Fanta Siby, told Agence France-Presse. Halima’s pregnancy had captured the imagination of Mali, even when it was thought she was ‘only’ going to produce septuplets, and the government stepped in to arrange and fund Cisse’s medical care. The babies’ father, Adjudant Kader Arby, remained in Mali with the couple’s older daughter, but told BBC Afrique he had kept in touch with his wife and was optimistic about the future. “God gave us these children; he is the one to decide what will happen to them. I’m not worried about that. When the almighty does something, he knows why,” he said.
Before Halima Cisse’s nonuplets, the record for the most children delivered at a single birth to survive was held by Nadya Suleman, who gave birth to octuplets in California aged 33 in 2009 after fertility treatment. Two cases of nonuplets have been recorded previously, one to 29-year-old Geraldine Broderick in Australia in 1971 and another to Zurina Mat Saad in Malaysia in 1999, but many of the babies were stillborn and none survived more than a few days.
Multiple births like these almost never occur naturally and usually result from fertility treatments, although, according to Youssef Alaoui, medical director of the Ain Borja clinic in Casablanca where Cisse gave birth, she was not undergoing any fertility treatment when she conceived. In Africa, fertility drugs are often prescribed when a woman comes off a hormonal form of contraceptive, said Kenyan gynæcologist Dr Bill Kalumi. This can then result in the release of several eggs, instead of one, during ovulation, increasing the possibility of multiple births. Guardian, 5 May; BBC News, 6 May; New York Post, 6 May 2021.
SPEAKING IN TONGUES
A remarkable story from 35 years ago was sent to Fortean Towers recently by Roger Morgan. Sarah Sarracino, 15, one of three children of a very wealthy Protestant family in Naples, had a sudden transformation. She spoke for only 10 minutes a day, and in a strange mixture of English, Spanish, French, Latin and biblical Hebrew. Her mother said she had stopped eating and sleeping, and her hands were as cold as ice. At the time of the news report ( Evening Standard, 28 Nov 1985), she was being examined by scientists, psychologists and teachers from her school. According to her brother Marco, 16, who appeared to be the only person capable of translating her utterances, she said: “It is not for my glory that I speak. Truth will come for all eternity.” Her mother said: “Sara is not mad, of that I am certain. She never knew any of the languages she speaks – but we can no longer communicate with her because she no longer speaks Italian.”