After leading Cochrane Finland for 22 years, Cochrane expresses thanks to Marjukka Mäkelä, for her outstanding contributions to Cochrane.

Marjukka founded Cochrane Finland in 1996 and during her long service to Cochrane, she has become highly respected in the field of evidence-based medicine. Marjukka was the first Editor in Chief of the Finnish national clinical practice guidelines in1994. She describes the early days of Cochrane Finland as: ‘Sitting in the dusty national medical library in mid-1990s to track down all Finnish-language RCTs and CCTs from the 1950s on. A classic one was a study on the effect of using DDT to protect milk from being infected by flies, outcome: number of diarrheos in infants’.
 
A substantial amount of Marjukka’s work evolved around the development of Current Care Guidelines. These are national guidelines that cover important issues related to Finnish health, medical treatment as well as prevention of diseases. The work included training of librarians in all medical libraries in Finland to do systematic literature searches for guideline groups; obtaining state budget for the development of Current Care Guidelines; and, ensuring the publishing of conflict of interest statements of all guideline authors on the Current Care website (with Finnish language medical journals following suite).
 
Current Care is now becoming a household name. A journalist recently complained in a blog about his wife being a “walking Current Care guideline”! The 100th Current Care Guideline was published in 2011. All this work on guidelines has been supported by the increasing number of high-quality Cochrane reviews that were used to support guideline development.
 
Jorma Komulainen has taken over the leadership of Cochrane Finland, and will focus the activities on (1) diffusion of Cochrane work in Finland, (2) implementing Cochrane evidence in national clinical practice guidelines, and (3) networking with the Finnish people who participate in various Cochrane groups. Marjukka will continue to support Jorma in this new role.
 
The formal announcement of the leadership change at Cochrane Finland has recently taken place at a national doctor’s training event in January – for more information, listen to this Duodecim Blues, asking all to join Cochrane!
 

The musicians are (from left to right): Marjukka Mäkelä, vocals; Jorma Komulainen, guitar and vocals; Janne Rapola, ukulele; Pasi Kojola, bass.
 
Text of the Duodecim Blues:
Finnish:
Sijaan suosituksen telepaattisen
tahdon tehdä ohjeen systemaattisen,
Archie mukaan siis
ja Cochranea lisää käyttöön please.
 
Kaikki mukaan tukemaan tätä Cochrane juttua,
se on lääketiedettä, ei tyhjää huttua,
populaarisuus
niin syntyy tämä Duodecim-blues.
 
English:
Instead of recommendations telepathic
I wish to make a guideline systematic
Follow Archie’s views
and apply more Cochrane reviews.
 
All aboard to support this Cochrane thing,
it’s real medicine, not a useless fling,
join the guideline crews
to sing along this Duodecim blues.