Brazilian woman declared dead by hospital wakes up in funeral parlour

LONDON - A Brazilian woman, who was declared dead at a hospital, escaped being buried alive when she woke up in a funeral parlour hours before she was to be interred.

Maria Das Dores Conceicao, 88, had arrived at the hospital in a very critical state, and after she received treatment, the doctors decided that they could not do anything anymore to save her.

So on Christmas Eve they signed her death certificate, giving the cause as high blood pressure and clogging of the arteries, and she was dispatched to the funeral parlour.

At the parlour, workers preparing her body for interment, noticed that she was still breathing and twitching slightly too.

They immediately raised the alarm and Conceicao was returned to the hospital in Brazil where doctors gave her emergency treatment while she was still in her coffin.

She is still in a critical state, but her granddaughter Noeme Silva Amancio, 31, who was among the first family members to welcome her back, said that she seems to be more active now than before.

“When I got to the hospital’s emergency first-aid entrance, I sighted grandma in her coffin, which was inside the funeral hearse,” the Daily Mail quoted her as saying.

“She was breathing and moving about more than when she had been initially hospitalised,” she revealed.

Management of the hospital at Ipatinga, in the state of Minas Gerais, are now investigating the matter.

Conceicao has a history of high blood pressure, vascular disease and Alzheimer’s, and had part of her right leg amputated in November.

“We are happy to know my mother is alive and unhappy with the lack of respect shown to her,” her daughter Custodia Amancio said.

“We are still not sure if we will sue the municipality and hospital. She continues in the intensive ward treatment sector and we are praying that she will improve quickly,” she added. (ANI)