From the Nine O’Clock, sad news is reported on the death of famed Romanian gymnast Lavinia Milosovici’s daughter Denisa:

Tragic news has hit the world of Romanian gymnastics. Denisa, the four and a half years old daughter of multiple gymnastics champion Lavinia Miolosovici, has died on Sunday morning. A nervous system disease was the cause of death.

According to sources close to the gymnast, the girl collapsed at home in Lugoj, her parents taking her to the Lugoj City Hospital where the doctors unsuccessfully tried to resuscitate her.

Denisa Florentina was operated in Beijing when she was two and a half years old, being the youngest patient there. The surgery, done by neurosurgeon Huang Hongyun, was declared a success although the risks were very high.

Lavinia’s daughter was born in March 2004, through a C-section, weighing just 1.1 kilograms. At birth the child received grade 1 on the Apgar scale and was diagnosed with a central nervous system disease. Because of an infection that went unnoticed during the pregnancy, Lavinia’s daughter moved slowly, could not talk and her feet were paralyzed. Even after the age of two, Denisa did not manage to take her first steps, being diagnosed with a third-degree dystrophy, umbilical hernia and with psychic and locomotion handicap.

Chinese neurosurgeon Huang Hongyun, from Beijing’s Xishan clinic, has promoted a special treatment technique for patients that have paralyzed limbs. The technique is based on transplanting stem cells from a foetus’s olfactory tissue to the affected area. Neurological and locomotion diseases can be treated this way.

Our condolences go to Lavinia and her family.