Bringing a Baby Back to Life

On February 3 this year, a woman left the Okryu Children’s Hospital with her little daughter who fell into sound sleep.

The name of the baby is Jon San Jong, the youngest of the 531st triplets born at the Pyongyang Maternity Hospital.

In September last year, medical workers of the maternity hospital and the Okryu Children’s Hospital got strained to see the two-month-old baby’s health conditions.

The baby, who weighed 1.2kg at the time of birth, was in the most serious state with her compound heart deformity and her left lung unidentifiable in the test.

From then on, medical workers at the two hospitals, sharing a road, spent busy days to save the baby from the jaws of death.

Doctors at the maternity hospital made sincere efforts to put the baby’s weight on a normal state as early as possible so that it could get all necessary medical treatments, while those at the children’s hospital held consultations to confirm a reasonable cardiac operation plan by tapping all the possibilities, conducting a simulation operation on scores of occasions

In last November, the baby’s father, a student at Kim Il Sung University, and his wife, as well as medical workers at the two hospitals were seen before the general operation theatre at the children’s hospital.

Since the start of the operation, there were ceaseless telephone calls to the hospital. Among them were those from the officials of the Economics Faculty of Kim Il Sung University and the Kangwon Provincial Committee of the Workers’ Party of Korea and in the city of Wonsan, where the families of the triplet were living.

Under the concern of many people, the surgery of ligation of the cardiopulmonary bypassing arterial duct, ventricular septal defect and arterial septal defect closure on CPB was brought to successful completion.

However, the treatment was only at the beginning as intensive care was essential after the surgery.

Tense days passed. Doctors and nurses bestowed fraternal affection on the little patient.

One day the doctor, who was frequently observing her conditions, felt with the help of a stethoscope something similar to the breathing sound from the little patient’s left chest.

Surprised, other doctors of the hospital examined the patient over and over again.

At last her left lung, which had not grown pressed by the deformed heart, began to take its shape.

As days passed with the doctors displaying their high medical skills and sincerity, the vital signs of the patient reached a normal level and her health took a turn for the better.

Seeing the baby stretching herself with her two small fists unfolded, Jo In Su, director of the children’s hospital, said:

Eight of 1 000 children are born with their hearts deformed in their mothers’ bellies. As the medical fee is too high to cure the disease, in some countries, when babies diagnosed of having such congenital heart disease, give up their lives at the outset. On the contrary, in our country those in critical states are being rescued from the jaws of death thanks to the free medical care system.

Han Son Ha, mother of the little patient, said that her baby could be brought back to life in the benevolent socialist system.