“We all panicked,” the son of the deceased, Gilberto Barbera, told the Associated Press, adding that doctors said his mother’s condition remained critical.
The woman, Bella Montoya, a former nurse, was admitted to hospital on Friday after suffering a stroke and pulmonary edema. When she did not respond to resuscitation, a duty doctor declared her dead, according to Ecuador’s Ministry of Health.
Barbera said that his mother was unconscious when she was brought to the emergency room, and a few hours later the doctor informed him that she had died and handed him documents to obtain a death certificate.
The old woman was taken to the funeral home, but as she was being buried in the coffin they began to hear strange noises.
“There were about 20 of us there,” her son said. “After about five hours in the coffin, the coffin started making noises. My mother was wrapped in sheets and banging on the coffin, and when we got closer we saw that she was breathing heavily.”
He added that his relatives had taken his mother to hospital in the central city of Papahoyo, where the health minister said she was in intensive care and was breathing through a tube, and doctors had given up hope that she would survive for a long time.
The Health Ministry said it was investigating the doctors involved in her case, and a technical committee had been set up to review how the hospital issued the death certificate.
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