The baby of a brain-dead mother is born

A baby is born by caesarean section at Sao Joao Hospital in Porto, northern Portugal, after almost 32 weeks of gestation of a mother with brain death for three months.

Hercília Guimaraes, head of neonatology at the health center, explained this week at a press conference that decided to advance cesarean section planned this Friday because the mother had presented a "respiratory deterioration" Early morning.

The baby is born after 31 weeks and six days of gestation with 1.7 kgs, an "adequate" weight for his gestational age, according to Guimaraes, who stated that he was "well born".

Salvador, name given to the child, needed respiratory badistance at birth, although the neonatologist said it was the usual practice in babies born at 32 weeks.

The hospital decided to try to prolong the pregnancy until 32 weeks because it is the moment that marks the barrier between premature and moderately premature, so it's already "a baby that generates less worry".

The mother had a severe asthma attack at twelve weeks of pregnancy and, after a period of induced coma, he went into brain death at nineteen weeks.

This is the first baby of a dead brain mother at Sao Joao Hospital in Porto

In the central hospital center of Lisbon, a similar case occurred in 2016, when a child was born to a mother with brain death for fifteen weeks., the longest period of survival recorded in Portugal.

The mother in a coma has been identified as international canoeist Catarina Sequeira, 26 years old.I was a talented athlete, but I suffered from asthma since my childhood.

Filipe Almeida, head of the Sao Joao hospital ethics committee, explained that the family and the the doctors made the decision to keep the fetus alive in the mother's uterus Sequeira never chose to abandon the law on the presumption of consent for organ donation in Portugal.

"To be a donor is not only to be able to donate liver, heart or lung, but also to give oneself so that the baby can live.", Almeida told the website of the observer.

"No one has the right to interrupt the mother's decision-making process", he affirmed.

Sequeira's mother, Maria of Fatima Branco, He told Portuguese television that he had said goodbye to his daughter on Dec. 26 and that another reason to keep him was that his father, Bruno, had always wanted to have children.

The child is born with a weight of 1.7 kg and should stay in the hospital for at least three weeks., according to medical reports.

In 2016, another baby, Lourenzo, was born in Lisbon after surviving 15 weeks in the belly of his mother, declared a brain dead.