Nepal's first test-tube twins born in Katmandu

Impoverished Nepal, battling a deadly Maoist revolt, got a rare bit of good news on Friday when doctors announced the birth of the country's first test-tube baby - and then test-tube twins.

Doctors in a private hospital in Katmandu said the test tube twins, both boys, were delivered within 45 minutes of each other at Om Hospital and Research Centre on Friday.

The twins were born to a doctor and his wife 36 weeks after the fertilised egg was placed inside her womb. One baby weighed 3 kg (6.61 pounds) and the other 2.7 kg (5.95 pounds).

It was the second test-tube success in the Himalayan kingdom in as many days.

Bhola Rijal, a doctor at the hospital, said the country's first test-tube baby, a boy weighing 2.25 kg (4.96 pounds), was born on Thursday at the same hospital to a couple who had been childless for over a decade.

"It is a good beginning. I hope more childless people will benefit in future," Nepal Television quoted the first baby's father, Rajendra Tamang, as saying.

In Nepal, state-run TV said the hospital would provide free medical services to the boy - who is still to be named - until the age of 25.

The world's first test-tube baby, Louise Brown, was born on July 25, 1978, in England and there have been over a million children born through in-vitro fertilisation since then.