Update (27 March 2023): Another image is being shared on social media claiming that a women had given birth to 11 babies in Barabanki district of Uttar Pradesh. However the image shows babies delivered through IVF at the 21st Century Hospital in Surat. Gujarat. As per reports, ‘about 30 women had conceived through IVF nine months ago the 21st Century Hospital in the city. Of them, 11 couples wanted the delivery of their babies on the special 11/11/11 date and scheduled operations for the delivery.’ More images of these babies can be seen here.
Update (20 December 2022): Another image of a woman with huge belly along with the image of babies delivered through IVF at the 21st Century Hospital in Surat is being shared with the same claim that a woman gave birth to 11 babies. However, the woman with huge belly in the image is a Mexican woman named Mercedes Talamantes, who had a 132-Pound Ovarian tumour. More details about her can be read here.
Published (20 April 2022):
A social media post accompanying a video of doctors performing caesarean section is being widely circulated with a claim that ‘A Parsi girl gave birth to 11 sons, this is the first incident in the world’. Further, the post claims that delivery was done in Surat’s Nanpura Hospital. Through this article let’s fact-check the claim made in the post.
Claim: A Parsi girl in Surat gave birth to 11 sons at single birth – Viral visuals.
Fact: There are no reports of any such woman giving birth to 11 children in a single birth. Currently Nadya Suleman from California holds the Guinness world record for most children delivered at a single birth to survive. She gave birth to eight children in single birth. As far as the viral visuals are concerned, a Turkish paediatrician shared the visuals initially in 2018, claiming a woman gave birth to six children at once. However she claimed the source of the video to be unknown. Hence the claim made in the post is FALSE.
There are no reports of any such woman giving birth to 11 children in a single birth in Surat or for that matter in any part of India. Further, using keyword search, we could not find any information about Nanpura hospital in Surat.
A Times of India article dated 10 November 2011, reported that ‘a Surat based In Vitro Fertilization (IVF) centre will undertake operations on 11 would-be mothers to schedule the births of their babies on 11-11-11’.
Further, the article added that ‘about 30 women had conceived through IVF nine months ago the 21st Century Hospital in the city. Of them, 11 couples wanted the delivery of their babies on the special date.’ Most likely this news could be the source for the viral post.
However, there are no reports in line with the claim made in the viral post. According to the Guinness World Records, Nadya Suleman holds the record for most children delivered at a single birth to survive. Suleman gave birth to six boys and two girls at the Kaiser Permanente Medical Center, on 26 January 2009. The babies were conceived with the aid of In Vitro Fertilization (IVF) treatment and were nine weeks premature when they were delivered by Caesarean section.
In June 2021, several media outlets published news that a South African woman has broken a Guinness World Record as she gave birth to 10 babies at once (here, here & here). However, later on, the news was found to be untrue. As per news reports, an official enquiry has found that no hospital in Gauteng province has a record of decuplets being born. Thus Nadya Suleman still holds the Guinness World Record for most children delivered at a single birth.
Viral visuals:
Reverse image search of the viral visuals led us to a 2018 Instagram post by a Turkish paediatrician Banu Ince Demirpençe, that shared the same visuals. As per the description of the post, the visuals show the delivery of six children and not 11 as claimed in the post. However, the post claims the source of the video to be unknown.
Moreover, the language that could be heard in the viral video, suggests that the video is not from India. Although we could not independently verify the location of the viral visuals, the information provided establishes that the visuals are not from India and the visuals do not show the birth of 11 children in a single delivery.
To sum it up, these visuals do not show any Parsi woman giving birth to 11 children in a single birth.
