Hospital deputy director Moshe Daniel said stillborn Israeli baby pronounced dead by doctors, who "came back to life" after spending hours in a hospital refrigerator, has since died again
Faiza Majdoub stands next to an incubator holding her premature baby girl who survived six hours in a hospital morgue refrigerator after being declared stillborn in the Nahariya hospital in the northern Israeli town of Nahariya, Monday, Aug. 18, 2008. The baby had been delivered in the 23rd week of pregnancy at a weight of just one pound, five ounces and was initially declared dead and placed in the morgue. When the parents came to collect the tiny body for burial on Monday they found the baby breathing and showing a faint heartbeat and she was rushed to the intensive care unit. Hospital deputy director Moshe Daniel said the child died early Tuesday, Aug. 19, 2008. He told Israeli Army Radio the specific cause of death would only be known after a post-mortem examination.
Baby who came back to life has died again
An Israeli baby, who momentarily 'came back to life' after she was pronounced dead by doctors, has died.
The one-day-old child passed away at 5:15 a.m. in Nahariya Hospital early this morning.
The baby, weighing just 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.
Hospital spokesman Ziv Farber said yesterday that any premature infant of that weight and age had only a 10 percent chance for survival. But five years ago, he added, "we had a baby weighing only 580 grams, and she survived."
Dr. Moshe Daniel, the hospital's deputy director, said that in his 35 years as a physician, he had "never heard of such a case. It was like a medical miracle."
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.
There have been rare cases of people who nearly froze under snow "coming back to life," but there have been no reports of babies doing so.
The hospital informed the Health Ministry, which will now decide whether to set up an internal or external investigating committee.
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