Health Ministry: Woman pregnant with 12 babies is 'a fraud'

But, an investigation by Health Ministry in Tunisia has tagged the woman “a fraud,” revealing that the woman isn’t carrying 12 fetuses in her womb. The woman, identified only by her initials of AF, has gone into hiding after being exposed as a fraud.

12-baby-pregnancy reports
Tabloid reports were rampant earlier this week that a woman in Tunisian is pregnant with 12 tots and is waiting to give birth later this month (Aug. 09). The reports claimed Tuesday that the woman has had two abortions and the children will be her first.

The woman, who’s in her 30s, is pregnant with 12 babies- six boys and six girls- in the southern region of Gafsa, the Echourouk newspaper reported yesterday.

"She is doing well and so are her future babies," the paper said.

"She is very happy and is anxiously waiting to see all 12 bouncing healthily in her hands," the paper quoted her husband as saying.

Probe finds the claims false
But, the Health Ministry’s investigation has now revealed that the unnamed woman has “psychological problems and is unlikely even to be pregnant”.

“Our staff interviewed her at length, but even her pregnancy appears to be in her imagination,” a spokesman in Tunis, the capital, is quoted as saying by the Telegraph.

“She’s claiming to be nine months pregnant with six boys and six girls, but there’s absolute nothing about her appearance which indicates this.

“The woman has refused point blank to undergo a medical examination. Now we can’t even contact her. She’s gone into hiding,’ the spokesman added.

A doctor at No’man al Adab Hospital, the only one in the town of Gafsa, also confirmed that the woman had never been in their care. He said: “It may be that she’s trying to make money from television. These kind of people can make thousands from appearing on programmes. Perhaps that’s what motivated her.”

Medical experts had already cast doubt on the woman's claims, explaining that 12 babies can not be conceived in one womb at the same time.

Peter Bowen-Simpkins, a fellow of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, said: "How could you get 12 babies into the womb at the same time? The womb just doesn't expand that much. She would have to be about seven feet tall."

The "octomom"
In January, Nadya Suleman, a 33-year-old American divorcee in California, made hundreds of thousands of dollars from media deals after giving birth to octuplets.

The birth of eight babies, delivered by a single mom, was initially hailed as a heart-warming miracle, but unease grew after it emerged that Suleman underwent in-vitro fertilisation (IVF) to conceive.

The single mother known as the "octomom" has conceived a total of 14 children through IVF, a fertility treatment in which eggs are fertilized in a laboratory by donor sperm and implanted in the womb.