“Unveiling the Extraordinary Tale: A Mother’s Miraculous Delivery of 17 Children Simultaneously Grabs Global Attention”

Join us to learn about the young mother who supposedly gave birth to 17 children at once. Several posts on Facebook have shared a composite photo featuring two unrelated images. However, the claim is false, and the story originated from a satirical website. One of the images has been manipulated, and the other image is being used out of context. The actual world record for the most children delivered from a single pregnancy is eight, held by American “octuplet mother” Nadya Suleмan.

Misleading posts, like the one shared by a Sri Lankan Facebook user on June 12, 2019, have garnered over 600 shares. These posts contain a composite image that combines a picture of a heavily pregnant woman with a photograph of a man in a hospital uniform surrounded by babies.

The text above the image claims that Catherine Bridge has set a world record by giving birth to 17 babies, all boys (“ʋarons” in Sinhala). The Sinhala text of the post translates to English as: “May the Three Jewels pray for the mother who gave birth to 17 baby boys and set a world record. Wouldn’t it be great if Sinhalese had babies like this?”

Similar claims have been circulating online since at least 2016. This particular claim, however, is false.

An image search on Yandex for the photo of the pregnant woman led to an image posted on a social network for artists in August 2015. The image in the misleading post has been digitally manipulated to make the woman appear more pregnant. A side-by-side comparison of the original photo and the image in the misleading post clearly shows the manipulation.

An internal Google image search of the photograph of the man in the green hospital uniform led to the same photograph posted on the Facebook page of a doctor named Robert Biter on August 3, 2012.

A keyword Google search of the text in the misleading posts led to an article published on the satirical website World Daily News Report in February 2014. The headline of the article reads: “USA: Mother Gives Birth to 17 Babies at Once.” The article states that an American woman named Catherine Bridges broke the world record for the most babies born in a single pregnancy by delivering 17 babies in 29 hours at Memorial Hospital in Indianapolis. However, it is important to note that the website clearly states that its articles are “satirical and fictitious” in nature.

This is not the first time that hoaxes about a record number of births have circulated on the web. AFP has also reported on similar claims.

According to the Guinness World Records website, the actual record for “the most children delivered from one pregnancy and surviving” is held by American Nadya Suleмan, who gave birth to eight babies in January 2009.

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