It was an “exceptional occurrence in any health system”.

That is how the Western Cape Government described a 22-year-old mother from Khayelitsha giving birth to healthy quadruplets at the Tygerberg Hospital in Cape Town on Friday.

“Spontaneous quadruplet pregnancies are exceptional with a reported incidence of one in 512‚000 to one in 677‚000 births‚” the Western Cape government said on Facebook.