The quints were referred to the hospital Thursday morning for further medical attention but one of them reportedly died shortly upon arrival with the second just hours later.

Dr. Dennis Dela Mensah and Dr. Mariam Theodora Bansah, Medical Officer in Charge of Pediatrics and Clinical Coordinator respectively at the St. Martin’s hospital confirmed receiving reports of the deaths but added that efforts to reach authorities at Korle-Bu for more information had been futile.

The babies were delivered at 2:02 am on Wednesday after the mother checked into the facility Tuesday evening shortly upon arrival from Tarkwa where she was living with her husband.

The babies described as ‘pre-term’ by doctors were only 28 weeks old at the time of delivery through caesarian section (CS) by Dr. Mariam Theodora Bansah, Clinical Coordinator of the Hospital.

Madam Gladys Annorbaah, grandmother of the quintuplets who accompanied the mother and babies to the hospital said they were informed of the first death shortly after arrival at the facility.

“Minutes after the ambulance team [from Agomanya] had left, one of the nurses at Korle-Bu called and asked me to take a look at one of the babies and she said one of them has died,” she narrated in an interview with GhanaWeb.
She said the second baby died around 4pm Thursday.

Dr. Dennis Dela Mensah on Thursday morning prior to the referral to Korle-Bu said the facility had to switch the oxygen on two of the neonates (fourth and fifth deliveries) due to their conditions.

“Three of them are doing very well but two of them we had to switch the oxygen that we put on them…because of how small they are and because they were born premature before the time that they were supposed to come out,” he explained.

He furthered that other factors including low birth rate, low weight, premature nature, lack of equipment and the need for specialist care necessitated the referral to the country’s biggest health facility.

With the new borns weighing between 0.7kg and 0.9kg, the medical practitioner furthered that “when you group them, not one of them falls above the required birth rate that we expect. Some of them are categorized under something we call extremely low birth rate, that is those with birth rate below 1kg and with that chances are fifty-fifty.”

Meanwhile, the mother of the babies, Hellen Tettey is said to be doing well.
There is between a one in 55 million and 60 million chance of a mother falling pregnant with five babies, without hormone treatment, experts say.