A pregnant international sportswoman was kept alive long enough to deliver a “miracle baby” boy before her life support was switched off.
Canoeist Catarina Sequeira, 26, was tragically declared brain dead in December after she suffered an acute asthma attack while she was 19 weeks pregnant.
In the second case in Portugal of a baby born to a mother who was brain dead, she was reportedly able to give birth at almost 32 weeks pregnant.
The baby boy, named Salvador, was born via Caesarean section on Thursday – a day earlier than intended – because Catarina’s respiratory condition was deteriorating
Catarina was a talented canoeist who had represented her country in the sport, but she had suffered asthma since she was a child.
For 56 days she was in an induced coma, kept alive via a ventilator to allow her baby to survive in her womb, according to reports.
Baby Salvador, born healthy and well at 3.75lbs, is being cared for in a neonatal hospital for at least the next three weeks, local reports say.
Portugese newspaper CM Jornal spoke with Salvador’s dad, who called the child his “miracle baby”.
“The baby is good. I ask you to respect my silence,” Bruno Sapolo reportedly said.
In an unusual case, the decision was made to continue Catarina’s pregnancy under Portugal’s organ donation law.
The head of the hospital’s ethics committee, Filipe Almeida, told Portugese media the decision to keep Catarina and her baby alive had been made along with the baby’s father and her family.
It was also possible because she had never opted out of Portugal’s presumed consent organ donation law, he explained.
“Being a donor is not just about being in a position to donate a liver or heart or lung, but also being in a position to give yourself so a child can live. And no-one has the right to interrupt the mother’s decision process,” he told the Observador.
The case follows the 2016 birth of baby Lourenco, who was born in Lisbon after surviving 15 weeks in his mother’s womb before her life support was switched off.
Source: Daily Mirror
