Malian mother gives birth to nonuplets
A Malian woman has given birth to nine babies, which is two more than the doctors had detected during scans.
25-year-old Halima Cisse gave birth to the nonuplets in Morocco. Mali’s government flew her there as she required specialist care.
“I’m very happy,” her husband told the BBC. “My wife and the babies are doing well.”
Ms Cisse gave birth to five girls and four boys.
A woman who had given birth to eight babies in the US in 2009 holds the world record for the most children delivered at a single birth to survive.
Two sets of nonuplets have previously been recorded: One born to a woman in Australia in 1971, the other to a woman in Malaysia in 1999. However, none of the babies survived more than a few days.
Fanta Siby, Mali’s health minister, congratulated the medical teams involved in Mali and Morocco for the “happy outcome”.
Single-shot J&J vaccine used for first time in Ireland
RTÉ reported that the single-shot Johnson & Johnson vaccine was administered through homeless services in Dublin last Thursday.
The single-shot vaccine is considered the best to use for hard to reach communities, such as the homeless. In clinical trials, the vaccine was found to have reduced the risk of people getting Covid-19 by 66% and of being hospitalised by Covid by 85%.
It takes about two full weeks to be protected from Covid-19 by the Johnson & Johnson jab.
Young people under ‘enormous strain’ because of pandemic
An Oireachtas committee has heard of the “enormous strain” young people are under because of the pandemic, RTÉ has reported. They also heard that changes are needed to support services if a “surefire recipe for a mental health disaster” is to be avoided.
Ian Power, CEO of SpunOut.ie, told the sub-committee on mental health that one in five young people using a free text service last year had considered ending their own lives.
In over 400 cases, the National Ambulance Service was mobilised as young people were in “real and active and imminent danger,” he said.
He said that the text support service had 33,000 “support conversations” in 2020, with the vast majority of them being in the second half of the year.
Rachel Traynor of the National Youth Council of Ireland listed a number of challenges young people are struggling with, such as increased anxiety, social isolation and loneliness, the loss of social skills and the negative impact of social media.
She also mentioned a rise in addiction, and the concern over the impact of disruption to education.