Pregnant COVID-19 survivor delivers healthy baby girl

NORTH COTABATO, Philippines — Frontliners led by Gov. Nancy Catamco celebrated impromptu Tuesday the birth in Kidapawan City of a baby girl by a mother who has just recovered from COVID-19 infection.

Catamco even sent to the North Cotabato provincial hospital in Kidapawan City flowers and gifts for the infant weighing three kilos.

“What is fascinating about this childbirth is that the mother is a survivor of coronavirus infection. I’m happy,” Catamco said.

Catamco is presiding chairperson of the North Cotabato provincial disaster risk reduction and management council.

She said the frontliners who took care of the child’s mother in an isolation facility were as elated.

“Who would not feel happy about it? It is a proof that we have succeeded in providing her interventions that she needed to get cured from coronavirus infection,” Catamco said.

Catamco said a special team of doctors, one of them an incumbent member of the provincial board, Philbert Malaluan, helped take care of the pregnant woman while under treatment for COVID-19 and until she gave birth Tuesday.

Malaluan is in charge of the provincial government’s COVID-19 incident command post.

Catamco said the child was delivered with the help of obstetrician-gynecologist Josie Ofelia Tuburan-Lim.