A WOMAN in England who was pronounced dead and placed in a bodybag was found to be alive by mortuary workers as they prepared to put her into a refrigerator. Ms Daphne Banks (61), was last night recovering in the hospital at which she arrived as a "corpse" on New Year's Day.
She had been taken to the mortuary by undertakers, but when her bodybag was unzipped, astonished staff saw she was still breathing.
A GP had pronounced Ms Banks, of Stonely, Cambridgeshire, dead at her farmhouse home and had called police because he believed a post mortem examination would be necessary. Neither the police nor the undertakers who took Ms Banks to the Hinchingbrooke Hospital in Huntingdon noticed she was breathing.
Once mortuary workers discovered she was alive, they alerted doctors and Ms Banks was taken to the intensive care unit.
Ms Margaret Markey, a spokeswoman for the hospital, said there were no plans for an inquiry because no breaches of procedure had taken place there. She said: "I can confirm that a body brought into the mortuary was found to have signs of life. The person bad been pronounced dead by a GP before arriving at the hospital.
"It was brought in by undertakers for normal processing. When signs of life were detected, our mortuary workers did the right thing and called our emergency `crash' team. They carried out resuscitation and took the patient first to the Accident and Emergency Department and then to the intensive care unit.
"The person has now been moved to a general ward from intensive care and is making satisfactory progress."
Cambridgeshire police said they were called to a "sudden death" at Ms Banks's home at 1.39 a.m. The doctor, who has not been named, had pronounced her dead, but would not issue a death certificate, so officers had to take certain details to pass on to the coroner.
"If a doctor has pronounced a patient dead, police officers are not going to argue and try to find a pulse," a spokesman said.
The undertakers, Cobbolds, refused to discuss the incident.
Ms Banks's husband, Claude, a farmer, was a the hospital yesterday, but declined to comment.