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07-07-2006 10:05 PM |
9-year-old girl gives birth in Brazil, a pregnancy youngest on record
RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil (AP) - A nine-year-old gave birth to a baby girl in Brazil's western Amazon jungle, a pregnancy that was the youngest on record and may have been the result of rape, authorities said Friday.
"There is no registry of any other Indian girl getting pregnant at such a young age," said Luiza Mello, spokeswoman for the National Health Foundation, which has been responsible for Indian health since 1999.
"It's common for Indian girls to get pregnant early - many at 11, 12 or 13 - but not at nine," she said.
The girl was found in the jungle in April by labourers working on a natural gas pipeline from the Coari oil fields to Manaus, a city of 1.5 million people 2,900 kilometres northwest of Rio de Janeiro, said the National Indian Bureau.
She was taken to Manaus and hospitalized for three months with malaria, pneumonia and anemia, Mello said.
The girl went into labour on Thursday. The baby, weighing 2.2 kilograms, was delivered by Caesarean section and reportedly was in good health, said Daniele Santos, a representative of the Indian Bureau.
The mother, of the Apurina tribe, has refused to speak, and the identity of the infant's father was unknown, Santos said.
"In some cultures it's natural for girls to have sexual relations after their first menstruation, but now we have to study if that was the case here, if their culture permits this," Santos said.
Mother and child were to remain under medical care for a month and then return to their village in Jaturana, about 120 kilometres from Manaus, she said.
"It's very rare, and we have to investigate whether it was rape," said Marina Mota, a representative for the National Health Foundation. "The tribe wasn't that isolated, and had a lot of contact" with outside cultures.
National census figures show Brazil has about 700,000 Indians. Most of them live in the northern Amazon rain forest.
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