Finland’s miracle baby goes home

Press, 24 April 1984, Page 16

Finland’s miracle baby goes home

By

CHRIS MOSEY

in Oulu, Finland

Marko Juhani Ylitalo went home recently from the University Hospital in this small town just below the Arctic Circle. This will be exactly one month after his birth rewrote medical history. He was born to Anja Ylitalo, aged 32, when she had been medically dead for 10 weeks — the first time such a thing has happened anywhere in the world. Finns, not a people given to exaggeration, call Marko “Ihmelapsi” — the miracle baby. It was on December 27 last year that Mrs Ylitalo, then in the twenty-second week of pregnancy, was rushed to hospital complaining of severe headaches. She suffered a cerebral haemorrhage and “died” the same day. A six-man medical team, led by Professor Pentti A. Jarvenin, head of the hospital’s emergency unit, consulted Mrs Ylitalo’s husband, Antero, aged 33. Then they kept her body “alive” on life support systems in what seemed a desperate

attempt to save the life of her unborn child.

Doctors say now they expected Mrs Ylitalo’s body to '‘live” only four to six days. Amazingly it survived 10 weeks.

“It was as though the baby’s heart helped to keep the mother’s heart going. It was quite miraculous,” says Professor Jarvinen. “I believe quite simply that it was the foetus that kept the mother’s body going so long — the power of new life against death, if you like.” . When Mrs Ylitalo’s blood pressure began dropping alarmingly on March 5, Professor Jarvinen supervised a caesarean operation. Her baby was born about one month prematurely, weighing three pounds.

Mr Ylitalo named the newcomer Marko. His daughter, Susanna, aged 11, chose the second name, Juhani. Mr Ylitalo, a farmer, has two other children, sons Petri, aged nine, and Jari, aged five. He is receiving “generous aid” in bringing up his family after his wife’s death, said a spokesman for the Finnish social service authority.

Mrs Ylitalo’s body weakened dramatically after the birth and two days later it, too, died. There had been no registered activity of her brain for 10 weeks.

“It is a great comfort to us that although my wife did not survive, my child did. I cannot express properly the gratitude I feel for what the doctors have achieved,” said Mr Ylitalo. Marko Juhani was put in an incubator after his birth and continued to develop normally. “He is a perfectly healthy

baby — in fine fettle,” said Professor Jarvinen. “We were conscious all the time that such a thing had never happened before and we were faced with a tremendously difficult ethical decision. “The mother could not be saved and so the life of her child was our first concern. But the father had to give his permission and if he had not done so, we could not have gone ahead. Then the baby would have died too.” — Copyright, London Observer Service.