Gypsy, 12, is Greece’s youngest mother
A 12-year-old Muslim girl from Thrace has become the youngest person to give birth in Greece since records started to be kept, doctors said yesterday. The child delivered a healthy 3.2-kilo (7-pound) baby girl on Monday at the Sismanogleio Hospital in the Thracian town of Komotini, some 792 km (492 miles) northeast of Athens. She visited the maternity ward accompanied by her mother. No mention was made of the baby’s father. Doctors said the Gypsy girl, who came from a village in the Rhodope area, was the youngest mother ever recorded in Greece. Another Muslim Gypsy aged 13-and-a-half had given birth at the same hospital two years before. In some 12.5 percent of all births registered over the past five years in the Komotini area – home to large Gypsy and Muslim communities whose members often marry at a young age – the mothers were aged under 15.
