Baby Comes Back From The Dead
Updated : Aug 10, 2009
A grieving Paraguayan man opened his baby son's coffin - and discovered he was still alive.
Jose Alvarenga was told by doctors at a hospital in Asuncion that his son had been pronounced dead shortly after birth.
Hospital orderlies delivered the premature baby's body, which had been placed in a temporary coffin, to Mr Alvarenga's home fours hours later.
Shortly afterwards, the grieving father opened the coffin to bid an emotional farewell to the infant, reports the Daily Telegraph.
"I opened it to look at his remains and found that the baby was breathing," Mr Alvarenga said. "I began to cry."
He rushed back to the hospital with his unnamed son in his arms and nurses placed the infant in an oxygen chamber.
Doctors seemed hopeful that tragedy would not strike again, describing the boy's condition as "stable".
The news of the child's miraculous recovery was then taken to his mother, who was in a bed in the same hospital.
An investigation has been launched. The head of paediatric intensive care at the hospital suggested that a doctor may not have properly checked the infant's vital signs.
But another doctor at the hospital's maternity unit said medics had tried to revive the baby for an hour before declaring him dead.
