Grieving brother discovers 'dead' sibling moving inside zipped-up body bag in morgue

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54 year old Valdelucio Goncalves (pictured above) was found alive inside a body bag after doctors declared him dead. His grieving younger brother got the shock of his life after he found Valdelucio 'wriggling around' inside a zipped-up body bag in a morgue in Brazil.

Doctors claimed the man had suffered "respiratory and multiple organ failure" and declared him dead a few hours after his family took him to the hospital on Saturday August 23rd. His family then took what they believed was his corpse to the morgue inside the Menandro de Farias General Hospital in Salvador, northeast Brazil.

The next morning Val's brother Walterio was allowed into the morgue to dress his body ready for his funeral later in the day, only to get the shock of his life.
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As Val's brother approached the body bag, which had been laid on a table top all night, he saw it moving. Walterio told Brazil's G1 website

"We had already made all the arrangements for my brother's funeral. All I needed to do was put some new clothes on him, so he'd be ready for the undertaker to come and collect him.

"Workers at the morgue let me in, and showed me where he was lying, in a zipped-up body bag. But as I got closer I could see it wriggling. Then I saw it raising and falling as if he was breathing.

"I went crazy and shouted for the medical team, the nurse, so they could see what was happening. They checked him and confirmed that he was still alive."

His niece Patricia Cintra said:

"We were worried about him and thought he'd be better off in hospital, that they'd take better care of him that we could at home. It was a shock to all of us when they called to tell us he'd passed away. But we started making the funeral arrangements.

"By Sunday morning everything was sorted. We'd paid for his death notice in a newspaper, bought the coffin and booked his funeral.

"His feet had already been tied together and his nose and ears stuffed with cotton wool."

After he was found to be alive, Val was rushed back to the intensive care unit of the same hospital which wrongly declared him dead and after checking him, he was transferred to another hospital, Santo Antonio in Salvador.

In a letter he wrote yesterday, Val, who cannot speak, said he saw death. He wrote:

"I, Valdelucio, saw death at my feet, but my faith was so great that I was cured. Before Irma Dulce I said, do a miracle in me, and she heard my prayer. I saw my mother telling me, son, hold onto her and you will be saved."

The health department for the state of Bahia ave said they will open an inquiry into the blunder.

"We will meet with the whole team involved in the patient's care to clarify the chain of events which allowed this to happen."