More than £13,000 has been raised to help bring a Borth-y-Gest woman and her “extremely premature” baby home from Vietnam.

In October, Jessica Jones was rushed to hospital in Hanoi, despite still being 13 weeks away from her due date.

Harrowingly, her daughter Aurelia was given just a five per cent chance of surviving by the doctors at the hospital.

Fortunately, the 27-week-old, who weighed just a fraction over two pounds, pulled through after she was born via caesarean and has made significant progress since, despite a difficult start to her young life.

She has just passed her official due date (10 January) but, after she was born, she had difficulty breathing unaided, has under-developed organs as well as a heart defect.

Among her other health problems, Aurelia also has retinopathy of prematurity - which can lead to blindness - and needs reconstructive surgery on her nose after her septum was eroded away by her air-supply tubing.

Jessica, 36, from Borth-y-Gest, who works as a teacher in Vietnam where she has been living with her Mexican husband Alfredo Dueñas for a year and a half, admits she feared the worst.

But after spending two-and-a-half months in hospital, they were all discharged on Christmas Eve.

The couple are now trying to raise £15,000 to get Aurelia back to the UK so she can have the “best possible care”.

Jessica told the Cambrian News: “We will be living in the UK indefinitely as her health is now the number one priority.

“I have been lucky enough to travel all over the world and live in Mexico and Vietnam but there is nowhere quite like home.”

For more information, or to donate, please visit www.justgiving.com/crowdfunding/bringaureliahome

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