‘One of the rarest births in the world’ – Somali mom gives birth to quintuplets

The joys of motherhood begin with the delivering of a healthy baby. A Somali mom cannot contain her joy as she has successfully given birth to healthy quintuplets at the Recep Tayyip Erdoğan Hospital on Monday.

The Turkish run hospital in the capital, Mogadishu also celebrated the birth of the quintuplets and said the mother and her five babies were healthy and shared in a tweet that they were being monitored by the doctors.

A photograph of the team that delivered the babies in the theater were posted along with the tweet.

“A mom gave birth to 5 little babies (quintuplets) in our hospital, one of the rarest births in the world.”

This is the first time the Mogadishu Somali Turkey Recep Tayyip Erdogan Training and Research Hospital also known as the Digfer Hospital has achieved such a feat. The hospital was inaugurated in 2015 and serves about three million people.

Meanwhile, in a related development, Tijani Abdulkareem and his wife Suliyah cannot go back to Nigeria after the birth of their quadruplets in Dubai because of restrictions over air travel due to the coronavirus.

Since July 1 when the two pairs of boys and girls were born, Abdulkareem, 32, says they have been hoping to catch a flight back home “but the lockdown made it difficult to get flights”.

CNN reports that Abdulkareem had tried to fly Suliyah to Nigeria when it became apparent that she was going to have the quadruplets. The couple lives in a hostel in Dubai and the cost of renting a bigger place was clearly going to overwhelm them.

But after recording the country’s first case, the Nigerian government shut its borders to commercial flights in March. There have been a few repatriation flights for stranded citizens in some countries but they are hard to catch.

Suliyah was expected to have her babies in August but they were born premature. Now, the couple have to spend $5,000 daily to keep the babies in separate incubators.

Now, they have racked up bills of more than $120,000. But Abdulkareem says the hospital has been mindful of their circumstances and “has really helped us”.

Suliyah has been discharged but since neither parent can work, Abdulkareem and Suliyah are relying on the support of the Nigerian community in the United Arab Emirates.

The Dubai Crown Prince has offered to pay the medical bills of his children. “I had been sleepless wondering how to pay the bill,” Abdulkareem, who is a chef at a restaurant in the city, opined.

According to CNN, Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum instructed his office to pay the hospital expenses of the “Nigerian mother and her quadruplets stranded in the city with mounting medical bills.”

It was all tears of joy when officials at the Latifa Hospital for Women and Children broke the good news to Adulkareem and his wife. Already, the family has returned the favour in their own small way by deciding to name two of their babies after the Crown Prince. Also, one of the girls will be called Latifa after the hospital.

“We would like to express our gratitude on behalf of the family to the UAE leaders, Sheikh Hamdan and the Latifa Women and Children’s Hospital for the love and compassion shown to our family during this challenging and beautiful experience,” the couple said in a statement reproduced by The National.

“We are immensely grateful and we can’t thank you all enough. It is only Allah that can repay you all for all the good deeds. We will never forget you.”