Forums

Posted: 04-09-2008 12:16 Post subject:

'Cremated' father turns up on TV

A man has been reunited with his father after spotting him on television - five years after he thought he was cremated.

John Renehan's father John Delaney went missing in 2000 and when a decomposed body matching his description was found in 2003 he was identified by a coroner.

But it has emerged that Mr Delaney, of Oldham, had actually been put in a care home after being found wandering around the town with memory loss.

Police admit "mistakes were made" in the identification process.

When Mr Delaney was found in 2000 in a confused state in Copster Hill Road he was unable to give any clues about his identity.

He was given the name "David Harrison" and placed in the care home where he stayed for eight years.

Traumatic ordeal

His family reported him as missing but appeals failed to uncover information about his whereabouts.

The body of a man, which had similar clothes and historic wounds to Mr Delaney, was found in the grounds of Manchester Royal Infirmary in January 2003.

It was identified as Mr Delaney and a funeral was held.

More than five years after the cremation service, Mr Renehan, from Didsbury, saw a television appeal about finding the family of the man in the care home, who he recognised as his father.

He contacted the authorities and DNA tests confirmed their relationship.

In a statement, Greater Manchester Police said the identification mix-up was a matter for the coroner, who is no longer in the post.

But a spokesperson said: "Greater Manchester Police accepts that mistakes were made and that Mr Delaney's family has been through a traumatic ordeal."

It said that inquiries in 2003 to establish the unknown man's identity were "not sufficient".

"At that time, only paper records of people reported missing from home existed," the spokesperson added.

"Today, Greater Manchester Police has advanced systems in place to ensure that mistakes of this nature are not made and robust checks are made to establish the identity of people who cannot immediately confirm who they are."

The spokesperson said the officer who dealt with the case in 2000 had since retired from the force.

An investigation is under way to try to establish the identity of the man cremated in 2003.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/manchester/7597500.stm

Posted: 30-12-2008 10:41 Post subject:

Reported killed 1940, obituary printed today: Lieutenant-Colonel Eric Wilson
Ben Macintyre

The oddest moment in the remarkable life of Lieutenant-Colonel Eric Wilson came when he discovered that he was officially dead, and thus joined the distinguished band of people prematurely consigned to the hereafter.

Colonel Wilson died last week at the age of 97, but his first “death” took place 68 years earlier, in the desert sands of East Africa.

On August 11, 1940, Colonel Wilson, then a captain commanding the Somaliland Camel Corps machinegun company, was involved in a ferocious firefight with Italian troops near Tug Argan Gap. On the first day he was wounded in the shoulder and eye and his spectacles smashed. Within four days, two of his frontline guns had been destroyed and his Somali sergeant killed, but he manned his machinegun as the enemy closed in.

He was formally listed among the war dead, his family was informed of his passing and he was posthumously awarded the Victoria Cross “for most conspicuous gallantry”.

Captain Wilson, however, was very much alive, held in an Italian prisoner-of-war camp in Eritrea. Badly wounded and suffering from malaria, he had stumbled from the battlefield into an Italian unit who forgot to inform the Red Cross of his capture.

While a prisoner, he met a newly captured RAF officer who informed him that he had been declared dead and awarded a posthumous VC.

“He flatly refused to believe it,” Hamish Wilson, his son, said yesterday. “He said that his Somali soldiers deserved at least equal credit and he had just done what he was supposed to do.” Captain Wilson’s “death” was announced in The Times in November 1940 - and his obituary appears in the newspaper today.

He is not the first person to receive a double death notice. In July 1900 George Morrison, the Peking correspondent of The Times, read of his own death in his own newspaper after he was believed to have perished during the Boxer Rebellion. His obituary described him as devoted and fearless. A friend remarked: “The only decent thing they can do now is double your salary.” They didn’t. Cool

Mark Twain was twice prematurely reported to be dead. On the first occasion, he remarked: “The report of my death is an exaggeration.” A few years later, The New York Times claimed that he had been lost at sea, prompting Twain to write an article proving that he was still alive.

When Sean Connery was reported by various Japanese and African newspapers to be dead from throat cancer in 1993, he immediately went on the David Letterman chat show to demonstrate his rude good health. When three quarters of Abba were reported dead in a plane crash in 1976, the group appeared on German television - the first of numerous barely credible resurrections for the group.

That remedy was not available to earlier victims of a mistaken obituary, who simply had to put up with their own deaths, sometimes at a cost to their careers. Samuel Taylor Coleridge once came across a man in a hotel reading the poet’s obituary aloud from a newspaper. The man remarked that “it was very extraordinary that Coleridge the poet should have hanged himself just after the success of his play; but he was always a strange, mad fellow”. Coleridge is said to have replied: “Indeed, sir, it is a most extraordinary thing that he should have hanged himself, be the subject of an inquest, and yet that he should at this moment be speaking to you.” Very Happy

The premature death announcement can be a shock, occasionally fatal. Marcus Garvey, the black nationalist leader, suffered a stroke in 1940, and soon after read a most unflattering obituary in the Chicago Defender describing him as having died “broke, alone and unpopular”. He then had another stroke, and died. Sad

However, sometimes the shock may be salutary: when the brother of Arthur Nobel died, a French newspaper is said to have run a premature obituary of the Swedish gunpowder magnate, describing him as a “merchant of death”. He subsequently founded the peace prize to ensure that posterity had a better opinion of him than the obituary writer. Cool

Ernest Hemingway, it seems, enjoyed the experience of being thought to be dead, after he was reported killed in an African plane crash in 1954. According to one biographer he would start the morning by happily reading a scrapbook of his own death notices, accompanied by a glass of champagne.

Returning from the dead can have unexpected consequences. St Oran of Iona is said to have risen from his grave after being accidentally buried alive. When he claimed to have seen angels he was denounced as a heretic and reburied, this time permanently. Shocked

The concept of returning from the dead is deeply embedded in our culture, from The Return of Martin Guerre, to Reggie Perrin, to the scene in Twain’s Tom Sawyer when Tom is moved by witnessing his own funeral.

As Colonel Wilson’s story shows, it was easy to disappear in the chaos and fog of war. And it was not so easy to reappear. His survival was not discovered until April 1941, when the Italian PoW camp was captured and he was liberated (midway through the construction of an elaborate escape tunnel).

Even then, some preferred to believe the earlier account of his gallant death. “The idea that he was dead was so firmly embedded that some people later accused him of being an imposter,” Hamish Wilson said. Shocked

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article5415647.ece

Posted: 04-11-2009 23:20 Post subject:

Brazil man appears at own funeral

A 59-year-old Brazilian man has surprised his family by turning up at his own funeral, local media report.

Relatives of Ademir Jorge Goncalves, a bricklayer, had identified him as the victim of a car crash in southern Parana state the previous day.

Police told O Globo newspaper that relatives had trouble identifying the corpse because it was badly disfigured.

It emerged that Mr Goncalves had spent the night drinking a rum-like liquor called "pinga" with his friends.

He did not get word of his funeral until it was already happening on Monday morning, his niece Rosa Sampaio said.

She said some family members - including herself and the man's mother - had doubts, but an aunt and four friends had positively identified the body.

"What were we to do? We went ahead with the funeral," she told O Globo.

A police spokesman welcomed the happy ending: "Before long, the walking dead appeared at the funeral. It was a relief," the unnamed officer told the paper.

The body was correctly identified later, he said, and buried in another state.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/8343576.stm

Posted: 03-12-2009 18:00 Post subject:

Posted: 26-01-2010 11:23 Post subject:

Pensioner declared dead by a doctor is found to be alive by undertaker as he was about to seal the coffin
By Mail Foreign Service
Last updated at 3:12 PM on 25th January 2010

A Polish beekeeper pronounced dead after he suffered a suspected heart attack was about to be sealed up in a coffin when a funeral director miraculously discovered a faint pulse.

Jozef Guzy collapsed as he started work among his beloved hives near the southern city of Katowice.

An ambulance was called and an experienced doctor declared that the 76-year-old had died.
Jerzy Wisniewski, a spokesman for the Regional Ambulance Service in Katowice, said: 'The patient was not breathing, there was no heart beat, the body had cooled - all are the characteristics of death.

Three hours later, an undertaker arrived to take Mr Guzy's body away.
Funeral director Dariusz Wys?uchato placed the man's body in a coffin and was about to seal the lid when his wife, Ludmilla, asked him to remove his watch.
As Mr Wys?uchato fiddled with the watch chain he happened to touch Mr Guzy's neck and detected a pulse.
He said: 'I touched around the neck artery and suddenly realised he asn't dead after all. I checked again and shouted, "It's a pulse!"
'I had a friend check and he noticed the man was breathing. God, it was a miracle!"

The ambulance was called again and the same doctor returned. He confirmed the pensioner had 'come back from the dead'.
Mr Guzy was taken to hospital where puzzled doctors failed to find anything wrong with him.
After a few days rest, he was sent home.

Mr Wys?uchato said: 'Thank God I did not close the coffin - if I had done that it would have been a tragedy.
'Something touched me to touch his neck - I'm so pleased he's alive.'
His wife, Ludmila, said: ‘I could not believe it when they said he was dead. The doctor put a white sheet over him and three hours later local undertakers pulled up.’

Mr Guzy added: ‘The undertaker saved my life. The first thing I did when I got out of hospital was take him a pot of honey.’ Smile

It comes just weeks after a hospital in southwest China prematurely sent a man injured in a motorbike crash to a mortuary.

Zhang Houming, 46, was found breathing and with a faint heartbeat in his coffin by his family.

He was taken back to hospital, but died an hour later.

His family, from the city of Neijiang in Sichuan province, are now claiming £136,000 in compensation.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1245843/He-noise-raise-dead-Beekeeper-wakes-coffin-doctor-declares-dead.html#ixzz0diEevcz4

Posted: 07-05-2010 10:07 Post subject:

Confusion in China as murder 'victim' reappears after 11 years
Police in central China are re-examining the case of a man convicted of murdering his neighbour 11 years ago after the "victim" suddenly reappeared in good health.
Published: 7:00AM BST 07 May 2010

Zhao Zuohai was convicted and sentenced to death by a court in Henan province on charges of killing his neighbour Zhao Zhenxiang in a 1999 dispute over a woman they both were seeing, the Beijing News said.

His sentence was commuted to life in prison and later reduced to 20 years.

Zhao Zuohai confessed to the killing after a headless body was found in a local well in Zhecheng county, where he lived.

However, his "victim" suddenly returned to the area this week after an 11-year absence, stunning police, the report said.

It said Zhao Zhenxiang apparently fled the county after the 1999 dispute and relocated without telling anyone, leading to his being listed as missing.

Police were now looking into whether the "killer" should be freed - and also trying to ascertain the identity of the headless corpse.

The report said it remained unclear why Zhao Zuohai had pleaded guilty to the murder in the first place but added that there were suspicions police had tortured the confession out of him.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/7689576/Confusion-in-China-as-murder-victim-reappears-after-11-years.html

Posted: 27-08-2010 08:54 Post subject:

Mother's cuddle brings baby 'back to life'
An Australian woman has told how she apparently brought her premature baby son back to life with two hours of cuddles after doctors had declared him dead.
By Rebecca Smith, Medical Editor
Published: 9:45PM BST 26 Aug 2010

Jamie Ogg showed no signs of life when he was delivered along with a twin sister at just 27 weeks gestation and weighing 2lb at a hospital in Sydney.

Doctors said they had lost him and he was given to his mother, Kate, who unwrapped his blankets and placed him on her chest so she and her husband, David, could say their goodbyes.

Following two hours of cuddling and being spoken to by his parents, Jamie began to gasp. Doctors initially claimed it was a "reflex" but the baby began gasping more often and then opened his eyes.

The family have spoken of their experience for the first time since Jamie was born five months ago. They told of the importance of "skin-to-skin" bonding between mother and baby in a technique also known as the "kangaroo touch" in Australia because of the way the animals held their newborns close to the skin in their pouch.

Mrs Ogg said: "I thought, 'Oh my God, what's going on?' A short time later he opened his eyes. It was a miracle. I told my mum, who was there, that he was still alive.

"Then he held out his hand and grabbed my finger.

"He opened his eyes and moved his head from side to side."

The survival of Jamie, whose twin was named Emily, has baffled doctors.

Mr Ogg said: "Luckily, I've got a very strong, very smart wife. She instinctively did what she did.

"If she hadn't have done that, then Jamie probably wouldn't be here."

Mothers are encouraged to have skin-to-skin contact with their babies as much as possible in Britain as it helps with feeding, bonding and settling the child. But often this is not possible when babies are born prematurely as they need to be cared for in an incubator.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/australiaandthepacific/australia/7966877/Mothers-cuddle-brings-baby-back-to-life.html

Posted: 01-09-2010 21:30 Post subject:

I nearly blurted readng that!

Posted: 25-07-2011 09:39 Post subject:

Man declared dead 25 years ago discovered working as Las Vegas bookmaker
A man from Chicago who was declared dead 25 years ago, after disappearing amid heavy debts and alleged links to the mob, has been discovered working as a bookmaker in Las Vegas.
By Jon Swaine, New York
12:26AM BST 25 Jul 2011

Arthur Gerald Jones, a father of three, went missing in May 1979 after losing his job as a commodities broker and struggling to pay gambling losses, including $30,000 from a single basketball match.

Mr Jones, then 40, “was not himself” in the weeks before his disappearance, his wife Joanne told local reporters at the time, and was particularly “jittery” after a friend and former colleague was murdered.
The FBI later disclosed they had investigated Mr Jones for possible links to organised crime in Chicago. His wife said she thought he may have carried out errands for local mobsters.

In 1986 he was declared dead, and his wife and children collected about $47,000 in benefits. It is claimed that they never heard from him again.

But Mr Jones, 72, was found last week in a Nevada bookmakers, where he is said to have worked for a decade. He was arrested and has been charged with crimes including fraud, burglary and indentity theft.

His current girlfriend, Patricia Baal, told the Las Vegas Review-Journal: “We’ve been together 22 years, and he’s been very loving and respectful to me and my family. And I love him. And everything’s fine.”

State prosecutors said in an affidavit that Mr Jones had admitted that he “left in 1979 without telling anyone and has to date made no contact with anyone from his past”.
He allegedly told investigators he bought a fake identity for $800 under the name Joseph Richard Sandelli. He moved to Florida, where he was arrested three times under the name “Richard Lage”.

He is then said to have moved to California, being arrested several more times, before settling in Las Vegas in 1988. He was arrested once again in 1992 under the name of Sandelli, the affidavit states.

Mr Jones was discovered after a complaint about his potentially fraudulent use of a Social Security number was investigated by the Nevada Department of Motor Vehicles.

His lawyer, Stephen Stein, has said he has been released on $20,000 bail. He is due to appear in court on August 23. Mr Jones’s wife Joanne Esplin, who has since remarried, could not be reached for comment

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/8658405/Man-declared-dead-25-years-ago-discovered-working-as-Las-Vegas-bookmaker.html

Posted: 25-07-2011 21:04 Post subject:

South Africa: 'Dead man' wakes up inside morgue

A 50-year-old South African man woke up inside a mortuary over the weekend and screamed to be let out - scaring away attendants who thought he was a ghost. Shocked

His family presumed he was dead when they could not wake him on Saturday night and contacted a private morgue in a rural village in the Eastern Cape.
He spent almost 24 hours inside the morgue, the region's health department spokesman told the Sapa news agency.
The two attendants later returned and called for an ambulance.

The man - whose identity has been withheld - was treated in hospital for dehydration.

"Doctors put him under observation and concluded he was stable," Eastern Cape health spokesperson Sizwe Kupelo said.
"He did not need further treatment."

Mr Kupelo said the man woke up at 1700 local time (1500 GMT) on Sunday, demanding to be let out of the chilly morgue in Libode village, frightening the attendants on duty.
"At first the men ran for their lives," said Mr Kupelo.

Officials have urged the public to contact doctors or the emergency services so they can they can pronounce someone dead before calling an undertaker.
"You begin to ask yourself how many other people have died like that in a morgue," said Mr Kupelo.
"We need to [get] the message across to all South Africans that it is very wrong for them to conclude on their own that a person has died," he said.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-14275271

Posted: 09-08-2011 21:24 Post subject:

Harry Potter actress, 13, comes back from the dead after last rites priest puts holy water on her head
By Daily Mail Reporter
Last updated at 2:07 PM on 9th August 2011

A teenage girl who doctors believed was going to die has been hailed a real-life miracle - after she came back to life when a priest put holy water on her head.

Child actor Lucy Hussey-Bergonzi, 13, collapsed from a brain haemorrhage just days after filming a walk-on part in 'Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince'.
Lucy, of Hackney, East London, was rushed to hospital and had been kept alive by life support machines for five days when her parents were told she wouldn't make it.

Her collapse was triggered by a rare condition Lucy had carried since birth called Arteriovenous malformation (AVM), a cluster of abnormal blood vessels that remain undetected until they burst.
Lucy was transferred to Great Ormond Street Hospital on February 15, 2009, where she got through two operations while she was in a coma

At her bedside Lucy's mother Denise, 41, was told by doctors it was time to say goodbye to her daughter.
As the family gathered to say prayers for Catholic Lucy, the priest prepared the holy water ready to douse Lucy's lifeless forehead.
As the water splashed on Lucy's skin the stunned family saw her arm shoot up in air.

Within 24 hours of her baptism Lucy was off the machines and showing signs of recovery as baffled doctors looked on struggling for an explanation.
Mrs Hussey-Bergonzi said: ‘Nothing could have prepared me for the day she was taken into hospital.
‘We were so scared I just wanted to pick her up and run away with her, I really thought I was having a nightmare and any minute I was going to wake up and Lucy would be fine.
‘When we got to the hospital a nurse came over and told me I had to leave her room.
‘When I said 'I'm not leaving' they told me that Lucy was in a coma and they were putting her on a life support machine.
‘I had no idea it was that serious. My world just came crashing down around me.’

Lucy had to have emergency surgery on her brain the day she was taken into Great Ormond Street hospital, two days later she had another operation.
‘It was the day after her second operation when I turned to my husband Robert and said 'we have to get her baptised' said Denise.
‘At that point I really thought she was going to die and I wanted to give her the best chance in the next life.
‘We had no idea what we were doing but the hospital were brilliant and organised the whole thing for us in two days.

‘So five days after Lucy was first taken into hospital we were by her bedside saying prayers watching her about to be baptised.
‘Then the moment the priest put holy water on Lucy's head, her arm suddenly moved up. At first I thought she might be having a fit but within 24 hours she was taken off all the life support machines and tubes.
‘It could be she was recovering anyway, but the way it happened, even the nurses said it was a miracle.

‘When I asked the doctors why she had come back to us they said they can't explain how it happened and to this day they don't know how or why she recovered.’

Despite her incredible come back from death's door, a determined Lucy still had to learn how to talk, walk and even eat and drink again.
For nearly four months she battled her way back to health, having been moved to the children's unit at the Royal London Hospital.

Today, aged 16, Lucy is slowly rebuilding her life despite suffering with severe headaches and numbness down her right hand side.
She said: ‘I do have headaches and there are side-effects to my medication which have made me lose a lot of weight but other than that I feel fine.

‘Learning to walk and talk again must have been difficult but I don't remember much of it. I just remember my friends and family being really supportive and kind.
‘There was one day when I was asked what I wanted for lunch and I couldn't say that I wanted a Subway so I had to make a train with my hand and say 'choo choo', it was quite fun making my family guess what I meant! Cool

‘I don't know what to make of the way I came out of the coma. I'd never heard of anything like this before.
‘The doctors were saying it was a miracle, people who have brain haemorrhages usually don't survive them.
‘I think it was a miracle, I can't think of any other explanation.'

Lucy’s mother said she was thankful for the support given by the surgeons and Lucy's teachers at Bishop Challenor Secondary, in Shadwell, London.
She said: ‘Lucy has never said to me, 'why me?' she just gets on with her life, and we have never said why us or anything like that, we are just happy she is alive.’

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2024086/Harry-Potter-actress-13-comes-dead-priest-puts-holy-water-head.html#ixzz1UZ5dbna4

Posted: 04-03-2012 12:11 Post subject:

Chinese woman, 95, comes back to life by climbing out her coffin six days after she 'died'
By Chris Parsons
Last updated at 7:36 PM on 3rd March 2012

A 95-year-old Chinese woman thought to have passed away stunned her neighbours - after waking up six days after she had been placed in a coffin.
Li Xiufeng was found motionless and not breathing in bed by a neighbour two weeks after tripping and suffering a head injury at her home in Beiliu, Guangxi Province.

When the neighbour who found her could not wake the pensioner up, they feared the worst and thought the elderly woman had passed away.
She was placed in a coffin which was kept in her house unsealed under Chinese tradition for friends and relatives to pay respects.
But the day before the funeral, neighbours found an empty coffin, and later discovered the 95-year-old, who had since woken up, in her kitchen cooking.

Neighbour Chen Qingwang, 60, who originally found Mrs Xiufeng, said: 'She didn't get up, so I came up to wake her up.
'No matter how hard I pushed her and called her name, she had no reactions.
'I felt something was wrong, so I tried her breath, and she has gone, but her body is still not cold.'

As Mrs Xiufeng lived alone, Mr Qingwang and his son made preparations for her funeral, and the 'dead' woman was left in her coffin two days after she was discovered.
The day before she was due to be permanently laid to rest, however, Mr Qingwang arrived at his neighbour's property and found her 'corpse' had disappeared.
Mr Qingwang added: 'We were so terrified, and immediately asked the neighbours to come for help.'

Neighbours searched her property before finding the pensioner in her kitchen cooking.
She reportedly told villagers: 'I slept for a long time. After waking up, I felt so hungry, and wanted to cook something to eat.
'I pushed the lid for a long time to climb out.'

Medics said Mrs Xiufeng had suffered an 'artificial death', when a person has no breath, but their body remains warm.
A doctor at the hospital was quoted as saying: 'Thanks to the local tradition of parking the coffin in the house for several days, she could be saved.
Despite cheating death, however, the same Chinese tradition left Mrs Xiufeng without any possessions, according to ritual, after a person dies, all their belongings must be burnt. Shocked

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2109719/Chinese-woman-95-comes-life-climbing-coffin-days-died.html#ixzz1o945ZBJs

Posted: 22-03-2012 22:34 Post subject:

Can you be 'dead' for 78 minutes?
By Nick Triggle, Health correspondent, BBC News

The more details that emerge about Fabrice Muamba, the more amazing his story becomes.
The latest has seen the Bolton footballer labelled the "miracle man".

The 23-year-old collapsed on the pitch during the FA Cup tie against Tottenham at 18:13 GMT on Saturday, but it was not until 19:31 that his heart started working again.
He was - according to Bolton's club doctor - "in effect dead" during that 78 minutes.
But how is this possible?

The full details of what happened to him have yet to emerge.
But the most likely explanation - and one suggested by those involved in his care - is that while his heart stopped working, it retained some form of life.

The cardiac arrest he suffered meant his heart was not contracting and therefore pumping blood around his body.
However, even when this happens, some electrical activity can still be taking place within the heart.
If this was the case, one of several things could have been happening.
The heart could have developed a severely abnormal rhythm, known as either ventricular fibrillation - where it shakes like a jelly - or ventricular tachycardia - where it is out of control.

The third explanation is that it has developed pulse-less electrical activity whereby there is an organised rhythm but no heart contractions.
In some cases, the state of the activity can interchange between the three.
The important thing in such cases is to start CPR quickly.
This artificially pumps the blood round the body, buying medics time to work out how to get the heart working properly.
Every minute delay in starting CPR reduces the chances of survival by 10%.

In this respect, the 23-year-old was lucky.
Pitch-side at White Hart Lane were a team of fully-trained and equipped medics.
What is more, a cardiologist was in the crowd and was soon by Muamba's side lending help.
It meant he received almost immediate attention.

But CPR alone is not enough. That only gives someone suffering a cardiac arrest a 5% chance of survival.
While he lay stricken on the pitch, the footballer was given oxygen and three shocks using a defibrillator.
The aim of that is to try to get the heart working again.
He was soon transferred to a waiting ambulance and rushed off to hospital.
In total he received another 12 shocks before his heart started working properly.

But was he really dead?
Clearly not in the technical sense - although his life was obviously in the balance.

Some people flatline following a cardiac arrest, which means they do not have any activity in the heart.
These cases are very hard to resuscitate people from.

But, instead, with some signs of a rhythm medics kept persisting.
In fact, experts say that even doing this for as long as they did for Muamba is not that unusual.
Cathy Ross, of the British Heart Foundation, explains: "Performing CPR early buys the time necessary. Seventy-eight minutes is a long time, but it's not unheard of."

If you want to find out how you could help someone who has a cardiac arrest, the British Heart Foundation runs a training course called Heart Start.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-17474789

Posted: 11-04-2012 20:23 Post subject:

A chilling story, in more ways than one...

Mother finds 'stillborn' baby alive in hospital morgue in Argentina
A mother who gave birth to a stillborn baby found her alive in the hospital morgue half a day later, it has been revealed.
By Jonathan Gilbert in Buenos Aires
3:22PM BST 11 Apr 2012

Analía Bouter, from Argentina, insisted on seeing the body of her daughter, born three months prematurely, and was taken to the morgue by staff at the Perrando Hospital in the north of the country.
But only 12 hours after her baby was pronounced dead by doctors last Tuesday morning, Mrs Bouter found her breathing in one of the morgue's drawers.

"I went with Fabián, my husband, at around 9pm to see her body," Mrs Bouter told local press.
"We opened the drawer and I touched her hand. I felt her look at me and when I saw her alive I fell to my knees. Then suddenly she let out a cry. She was freezing in there."

Mr Bouter, who had already taken steps to obtain a death certificate, had asked to see his daughter before she was taken to the morgue, but doctors told him the drawer had already been shut and that he would have to wait.
He said: "I folded back the blanket and we saw her hands moving. I couldn't believe it. I was speechless."

The nurse in charge at the morgue then lifted up the newborn before Mrs Bouter's brother took her running to the doctors.
The young couple have named their daughter, who is healthy in hospital, Luz Milagro, which translates as Light Miracle.
"Luz is a miracle," Mrs Bouter said. "If we had left it to go and see her another day, she may not have held on."

Doctors say Luz was born without vital signs. Rafael Sabatinelli, secretary of health of the Chaco province where the Bouters live, called the events a "disgrace" and has opened an investigation for the duration of which specialists and nurses involved in the birth will be suspended.
José Luis Meiriño, director of the hospital, said: "We work under strict protocols, but there's no explanation for this."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/southamerica/argentina/9197937/Mother-finds-stillborn-baby-alive-in-hospital-morgue-in-Argentina.html

Posted: 08-06-2012 03:18 Post subject: