Staff writer
On Nov. 5, 1998, a 38-year-old Myanmar woman gave birth through Caesarean section to a baby girl -- her first child -- at a hospital in Shinjuku Ward, Tokyo. The baby was big, weighing 3,734 grams.
But the mother's happiness did not last long. Five days later, doctors told her that her child had a congenital heart problem -- patent ductus arteriosus, abnormal persistence of an open passage between the aorta and the pulmonary artery. Normally this passage closes shortly after birth.