Dead baby 'comes back to life'
Pastor Dale Morgan
Dead baby 'comes back to life'*
An Israeli baby who was pronounced dead by doctors "came back to life"
on Monday after spending hours in a hospital refrigerator.
By Our Foreign Staff
Telegraph.co.uk
Last Updated: 10:58PM BST 18 Aug 2008
The baby, weighing only 600 grams at birth, spent at least five hours
inside one of the hospital's morgue refrigerators, before her parents,
who had taken her to be buried, began noticing some movement.
"We unwrapped her and felt she was moving. We didn't believe it at
first. Then she began holding my mother's hand, and then we saw her open
her mouth," said 26-year-old Faiza Magdoub, the baby's mother.
The baby was pronounced dead several hours earlier, after doctors at
Western Galilee hospital in northern Israel were forced to abort her
mother's pregnancy because of internal bleeding. Mrs Magdoub was in the
fifth month of her pregnancy.
"We don't know how to explain this, so when we don't know how to explain
things in the medical world we call it a miracle, and this is probably
what happened," hospital deputy director Moshe Daniel said.
"We've informed the Health Ministry and I guess they'll appoint a
commission of inquiry. The hospital will ask for an external
investigation of the case."
The baby has been taken to the hospital's neo-natal intensive care unit
for further treatment, but doctors were not sure how long she will live.
Hospital director Dr. Massad Barhoum told Israeli media that her chances
of survival are "very, very slim" because she was born so early.
Motti Ravid, a professor of internal medicine, told Israel's Channel 10
that the low temperature inside the cooler had slowed down the baby's
metabolism and likely helped her survive.