A 76-year-old Ecuadorean woman, who was declared dead at a hospital, was found alive after she knocked at the coffin on Friday last week. Retired nurse Bella Montoya stunned her relatives as she proved the doctor, at the Martín Icaza Hospital in Babahoyo, wrong. Meanwhile, an inquiry into the hospital has been initiated by the country's government.
"My mum started to move her left hand, to open her eyes, her mouth; she struggled to breathe," her son Gilbert Balberán told BBC as he described the moment he realised his mother was still alive.
Video of the incident shows her lying in an open casket, struggling to breathe, while someone complains that an ambulance they called has not yet arrived.
Minutes later, firefighters arrived and lifted Montoya from the coffin onto a stretcher and took her back to the same hospital where she had been declared dead.
{{/usCountry}}Minutes later, firefighters arrived and lifted Montoya from the coffin onto a stretcher and took her back to the same hospital where she had been declared dead.
{{/usCountry}}Her son told local media that she is currently in intensive care.
"My mum is on oxygen, her heart is stable. The doctor pinched her hand and she reacted, they tell me that's good because it means she is reacting little by little," newspaper El Universo quoted him as saying.
He said he had taken his mother to the hospital at about 9am on Friday "and at noon a doctor told she died".
He said he had even been issued with a death certificate, which stated that she had died of cardiopulmonary arrest after suffering a stroke.