Second baby for womb transplant mum

One of the first women to receive a womb transplant is expecting a second child, a medical conference has heard.

Prof Mats Brannstrom, who pioneered the fertility surgery in 2014, made the announcement at the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists' annual meeting in Birmingham.

UK doctors have already been given permission to carry out Britain's first 10 womb transplants.

They plan to transplant wombs that have come from dying donors.

The donors will be brain dead but their hearts will still be beating.

In comparison, most of the nine women treated by Prof Brannstrom's clinic in Sweden had their wombs donated to them by their own mothers.

Experts in the UK say a different decision has been reached here because the initial operation to remove the womb from the donor is complex and not without risk.

Richard Smith, who leads the UK Uterine Transplant Research Programme, said: "Mats Brannstrom and his team have achieved a very important proof of concept and we heartily congratulate them once again.

"Most of all, we have great admiration for all organ donors and those ladies who volunteered to undergo this groundbreaking surgery.

"Absolute uterine infertility is a huge and growing problem affecting tens of thousands of women in this country - and the success of the Swedish team shows that at least some of these women will be able to bear their own child where before there was no hope."

There are many thousands of women in the UK who were either born without a healthy womb or who had to have their womb removed because of cancer or another serious illness.