Wednesday, August 3 2005 11:03 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Richmond (US): A brain-dead pregnant woman, who has been kept on life support to give her foetus more time to develop, gave birth to a baby girl, the woman's brother-in-law said.

"There were no complications during delivery and the baby is doing well," Justin Torres wrote in an e-mail to The Associated Press yesterday (August 2, 2005).

The baby, Susan Anne Catherine Torres, weighs 812 grams and is 34.3 centimetres long, he said. The infant was delivered via caesarean section, the hospital said.

Susan Torres, a 26-year-old researcher at the National Institutes of Health, lost consciousness from a stroke on May 7 after aggressive melanoma spread to her brain. Her husband, Jason Torres, said doctors told him his wife's brain functions had stopped.

Jason Torres quit his job to be by his wife's side and last month her foetus passed the 24th week of development, the earliest point at which doctors felt the baby would have a reasonable chance to survive, the brother-in-law said.

A website to help raise money for the family's mounting medical bills had received about USD400,000 in donations from around the world as of two weeks ago, Justin Torres said. The family said it must pay tens of thousands of dollars each week that insurance does not cover.

Doctors had hoped to hold off on delivering the child until 32 weeks' gestation. A full-term pregnancy is about 40 weeks.

The infant is being monitored in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit at the Virginia Hospital Center in Arlington, 160 km north of Richmond.