by Isi Esene

A 54-year-old man, Valdelucio Goncalves was on Sunday miraculously found alive in a morgue after doctors had declared him dead.

Sources say the Brazilian man who was being treated for stomach cancer was found wriggling in a zipped-up body bag after doctors declared he died of ‘respiratory and multiple organ failure’.

Two hours after his ‘death’, Mr Goncalves’ brother, Walterio, was allowed into the morgue to dress his body ready for his funeral later in the day.

But as he approached the body bag, it began moving.

He 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 he 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.”

Mr. Goncalves was rushed back to the intensive care unit of the same hospital which wrongly declared him dead but was later transferred to another hospital, Santo Antonio in Salvador at the request of family members.

Miracles do happen, don’t they?

Isime Esene