A story about a four-month-old baby taken by her mother from the hospital in Vila Nova de Gaia last Wednesday, after the woman was informed that her daughter would be placed in foster care, has spread across the country.
After a day and a half of being missing, by late Thursday afternoon, the child was handed over by a relative of the mother at the GNR post in Carvalhos, Vila Nova de Gaia.
The baby “is well” and returned to the hospital (from where she was taken) last night, a source from the Local Health Unit (ULS) of Gaia and Espinho told the Lusa news agency.
Meanwhile, this Friday, December 5, the same source revealed that the girl is now under the care of an institution. The handover took place between 8 p.m. and 10 p.m. on Thursday, shortly after being brought by the GNR to the hospital.
The four-month-old baby who returned on Thursday evening to the Gaia hospital, after being handed over to the GNR in Carvalhos, is now in an institution, revealed a hospital source today to Lusa.
Lusa | 09:27 – 05/12/2025
Also today, Correio da Manhã (CM) provides more details about the case. The newspaper reveals that the mother who removed her daughter from the Pediatrics department of the Gaia hospital is a young woman of only 20 years, living in a camp in Grijó, also in Gaia, and had previously lost custody of another child due to poor living conditions.
Following a similar judicial decision, the woman managed to remove the security bracelet from one of the baby’s ankles, leaving the device intact in the bathroom of the hospital room where the girl had been admitted since November 21, and took the child to an unknown location.
Hospital only noticed the disappearance 2 hours later
The baby’s removal occurred when social workers were already present at the hospital to carry out her placement with the foster entity. However, the hospital only realized the disappearance two hours after it happened.
Jornal de Notícias (JN) reports that it was 1 p.m. on Wednesday, December 3, when the mother removed the security bracelet from her daughter’s ankle, passed through the pediatric service door, and, alone and always with the child in her arms, left the hospital through the main entrance.
She then walked towards the metro station, although police suspect there was a car waiting for her in a parking lot near the hospital.
No alarm was triggered, and the baby’s absence was only noticed by 3 p.m., about two hours later, with the disappearance communicated to the Public Security Police (PSP) in the following minutes.
Mother visited baby daily. Grandmother was also there
The baby had been admitted since November 21 because the Family and Minors Court of Gaia concluded that the relatives, living in a campsite, were not capable of providing care.
According to JN, the mother herself brought the baby to the healthcare unit, where she would return daily to visit her daughter, as there was no judicial order preventing her.
The baby’s grandmother also reportedly visited several times, as revealed on Thursday by the president of the Board of Directors ULS Gaia/Espinho, Luís Matos, during a press conference.
ULS denies any fault
In response to the case, when the baby was still missing, the hospital head in Gaia denied any fault, either in terms of security or staff.
“We cannot say there was a fault. All of this happens at the time when there is a change of nursing shift. The ward is very large. There are many children. The child was accompanied by the mother. At no point could our staff say there was a problem to solve. And, all these times, are very short. Everything happened very quickly. There is no way to attribute direct responsibility to our staff”, he argued.
For the president of the Board of Directors ULS Gaia/Espinho, “there was no fault”. The baby “never had discharge” and was always accompanied by her mother or grandmother. The girl was to be handed over to a foster family on the day she disappeared. For now, there are no signs of her whereabouts.
Natacha Nunes Costa | 10:39 – 04/12/2025
The hospital has since opened an internal inquiry into the case. Authorities are investigating what happened and how a baby disappeared from Gaia hospital, without the security bracelet triggering any alarm, and without anyone noticing.
