Ambulance flight returns runaway from Lapland back to her native Austria

print this

One of the more bizarre "missing persons" stories of the year so far came to an end on Wednesday when the Austrian woman who went AWOL from a Viennese hospital last week - in order to give birth "the natural way" in Finnish Lapland - was returned to her home country on an ambulance flight.
      The woman’s premature twin daughters, who were delivered through an emergency caesarean section in the city of Rovaniemi near the Arctic Circle, will remain for now under observation at the Oulu University Hospital.
     
The woman, who was elected "Miss Wine" in the Austrian state of Burgenland in 1990, ran away from a Viennese hospital on July 27th. The 37-year-old former beauty queen, who surfaced in Rovaniemi last Saturday, said she wanted to give birth to her babies the natural way, among the Sámi people of Lapland.
      The C-section twins, weighing only 600 and 700 grams, are currently being cared for in Oulu.
      After the delivery the woman, who is said to suffer from schizophrenia, was transferred to the Muurola Psychiatric Hospital in Rovaniemi. On Wednesday she was taken to Rovaniemi Airport, from where an ambulance plane returned her back to Austria and presumably back to institutional care. Her disappearance and subsequent reappearance far from home caused much media interest back in Austria.


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Missing Austrian woman gives birth to twins in Finnish Lapland (7.8.2007)

Helsingin Sanomat