Mackay Memorial Hospital gynecologist Huang Min-chao said Saturday that of the more than 200,000 babies born in 2008, 13.4 percent were delivered by women aged 35 or older -- the high-risk age bracket for having a child.

Citing Ministry of the Interior statistics, Huang Min-chao said 26,000 infants were born to women of advanced reproductive age in 2008, which constituted a much higher proportion of the total than the 8.2 percent recorded in 1998.

The mothers, while generally independent financially, faced higher health risks during their pregnancies, ranging from high blood pressure, diabetes and toxemia to placenta separation and premature birth, Huang said.

The miscarriage rate, for example, rises from 10 percent for 34-year-old women to 85 percent for 44-year-old women.

Notably, 9,111 of the more than 104,000 women who delivered their first child last year were older than 35 years old, and nearly 1,000 of them became first-time mothers at age 40 or older, including 44-year-old celebrity Wu Tan-Ju, whose case focused attention on the issue.

Wu was forced to have a Caesarean section to deliver her baby girl after only 29 weeks of pregnancy because a twin she was carrying had died from toxemia and needed to be removed, the physician said.