Woman with a dead brain since December gives birth | General news

Funerals are being held for a 26-year-old woman who gave birth to a baby on Thursday despite her brain-dead condition since December.

The international sportswoman Catarina Sequeira has been declared brain dead after an acute asthma attack at her home.

The baby, named Salvador, was born while she was nearly 32 weeks pregnant and is currently being cared for in a neonatal hospital.

This is the second case of this type in Portugal where a baby is born to a mother who died of brain death.

A talented canoeist who represented his country, Sequeira suffered from asthma since childhood.

She had an asthma attack while she was 19 weeks pregnant and was in a coma. However, her condition deteriorated and in 26 days she was declared brain dead, according to reports. A fan was attached to her for 56 days to allow her baby to survive in her belly.

Why the Portuguese law on organ donations decided this case

The doctors stated that the intention was to wait until Friday until the mother reaches 32 weeks of gestation, but her respiratory status has deteriorated and cesarean section has been postponed. on Thursday.

Thirty-two weeks were considered the period during which babies had a very high probability of survival, hospital officials said.

Filipe Almeida, head of the hospital's ethics committee, explained that the decision to keep the baby alive in his mother's womb had been taken during a discussion with the family and that She never withdrew from the Portuguese law on alleged organ donation.

"Being a donor is not just about being able to donate a liver, a heart or a lung, but also being able to give oneself to have A child can live, "he said. "And no one has the right to interrupt the mother's decision-making process," he told the Observador's website.

The baby's father wanted the child to be born, as well as the rest of the family.

Sequeira's mother, Maria de Fátima Branco, told Portuguese television that she had said goodbye to her daughter on December 26 and that the decision to keep the baby had been taken because her father, Bruno, had always wanted to be a father.

The baby is born weighing 1.7 kg and should stay in the hospital for at least three weeks, according to reports.

In 2016, another baby, Lourenço, was born in Lisbon after surviving 15 weeks in the womb of his dead mother.