- HANOI -- An elderly Vietnamese
man who spent seven hours in a drawer at a hospital morgue in Ho Chi Minh
City was found alive by relatives who had come to bury him, an official
said today.
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- Nguyen Van Quan, 73, was admitted to the Nguyen Tri Phuong
hospital last week after complaining of a tight chest, said Thu Ba of Ho
Chi Minh City's Health Department.
-
- By the time Quan arrived at the hospital, his whole body
was dark purple. He had experienced heart failure, his blood pressure was
zero and no pulse was felt, she said.
-
- Hospital staff tried unsuccessfully for 30 minutes to
resuscitate him, Ba said.
-
- Quan was sent to the hospital morgue at 11 p.m. on Aug.
15 and was discovered seven hours later by his daughter and son-in-law,
who had come to take him home for his funeral, the English daily Vietnam
News reported.
-
- "I was shocked and frightened when I saw the blanket
that covered my father moving as my husband and I stood in front of the
drawer he was in," Nguyen Thi Gai was quoted as telling the paper.
-
- "When the morgue's officials pulled back the blanket,
my father's eyes moved, brightening with joy."
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- Quan was sent back to the intensive care unit where he
had fallen into a coma and was breathing through a respirator on Friday,
Ba said.
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- Nguyen suffers from asthma and had been admitted to the
hospital many times before with breathing difficulties, she said.
-
- The newspaper quoted a morgue official as saying that
only one of the two air conditioners was running at the time Quan was there,
which likely kept him from freezing to death.
-
- The incident is being investigated, Ba said. Hospital
officials declined comment.
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- Copyright 2003 News Limited.
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- http://www.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,4057,7034939%255E1702,00.html
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