A Chinese woman who challenged doctors to give birth several days before the lung transplant died at the age of 43, China News

A Chinese woman who last year suffered a lung transplant and cardiac surgery 11 days after giving birth died at the age of 43, media reports from the mainland reported.

In a controversial case, Wu Meng, from Wuxi, Jiangsu Province, eastern China, insisted that her pregnancy continue last year, despite doctors having urged to terminate her pregnancy due to conbad heart disease and pulmonary arterial hypertension.

She gave birth to a 1 kg baby by caesarean section in June after 28 weeks of pregnancy and was placed on a survival device for 11 days before the surgeon gave her two lungs transplanted and closed a hole in her heart. His newborn son was in intensive care for two months, but he is now in good health.

Wu's health deteriorated at the end of last year and she was admitted to the Wuxi People's Hospital while waiting for a second transplant, but died Monday of a pulmonary infection, reported the Modern Express.

After hearing of Wu's death, her doctor, Chen Jingyu, wrote on the Weibo microblogging platform in China that she had died partly because of her overconfidence.

"The immunological suppression in lung transplant patients would easily cause infections," Chen wrote. "But she did not trust the anti-infective drugs prescribed by the doctors, thinking that the transplant cost her too much."

Most of the cost of the operation was not covered by the public health insurance scheme, he said.

Chen wrote that Wu refused to take the necessary medication, leading to repeated lung infections. His immune system then rejected the transplanted lungs.

"She did not even follow the advice of doctors asking her to take anti-rejection drugs," he said.

When Chen told Wu that she needed another lung transplant, she wrote him a letter in which she claimed that only God could save her, not the doctors, Chen wrote on Weibo.

Wu had documented her pregnancy online and had gained popularity among women who yearned to have a baby against the advice of a doctor.

Posting her decision to continue her pregnancy in a short video posted last year, Wu said that if she succeeded, it would give hope to all women with pulmonary hypertension.

This article was first published in South China Morning Post.