Egyptian woman gives birth to septuplets

Cairo: An Egyptian woman gave birth to septuplets early on Saturday in the coastal city of Alexandria after taking fertility drugs in an effort to produce a son, a hospital director said.

Ghazala Khamis, 27, was in good condition at the hospital after having a blood transfusion during her Caesarean section due to bleeding, said Emad Darwish, director of the Al Shatbi Hospital where she gave birth.

The newborns, four boys and three girls, weigh between 3.2 pounds (1.45 kilograms) and 6.17 pounds (2.8 kilograms) and are in stable condition, Darwish said.

They have been placed in incubators in four different hospitals that have special premature baby units, he said.

"This is a very rare pregnancy - something I have never witnessed over my past 33 years in this profession," Darwish said.

Darwish decided to carry out the Caesarean section at the end of Khamis' eighth month of pregnancy due to the pressure on her kidneys.

"From the initial checkup, I say that none of the babies have any sort of deformities or have incomplete organs," Darwish said.

Khamis, the wife of a farmer hailing from the northern province of Beheira, is already the mother of three girls.

She was admitted to the hospital two months earlier.

Darwish criticised Khamis's doctor at her local clinic who prescribed fertility drugs after she hadn't ovulated for five years.

´She didn't actually need those drugs. There was other simple medication to take,ª he said.
Her brother, who has followed the case from the very beginning, said she kept on trying to have children because they wanted to have a son.

In rural Egypt, sons are preferred to daughters.

Khamis Khamis, the brother, said that the family was astonished when they learnt about multiple pregnancy.
"We thought about an abortion but then we felt it's 'haram' (religiously forbidden) so we said let God's will prevail," he said over the phone from Alexandria.

According to Khamis, the Egyptian minister of health has decreed that the seven babies will receive free milk and diapers for two years.

Egypt's population has tripled since 1952 to 76 million people in 2006, according to the latest census.

The Egyptian government this summer launched a new campaign to raise awareness over the repercussions of a rising population.

In March, President Hosni Mubarak has blamed overpopulation for the acute shortages of subsidised bread that have hurt millions of the nation's poor as well as a lack of sufficient housing.