QUITO: An elderly Ecuadoran woman woke up inside a coffin at her own wake and was being treated at the same hospital that declared her dead two days earlier, her son said on Sunday.

A video posted on Twitter showed Bella Montoya, 76, in her open coffin breathing heavily while two men assist her.

Her son, Gilbert Balbern, said “she was hitting the box” with her left hand after the five-hour wake.

Balbern had to arrange for the donation of a coffin for the impoverished family after a public hospital in the coastal town of Babahoyo declared Montoya dead on Friday.

“They even gave us a death certificate,” he said in a video broadcast by local media.

Ecuadoran media reported the unusual incident, with headlines celebrating the woman’s “resurrection”.

“My mom is on oxygen. Her heart is stable. The doctor pinched her hand and she reacted,” Balbern said in a newspaper report.

“They tell me that this is good, because it means that she is reacting little by little.”

Montoya was admitted to hospital with a suspected stroke “and went into cardiorespiratory arrest without responding to resuscitation manoeuvres, so the doctor on duty confirmed her death,” Ecuador’s health ministry said in a statement on Sunday.

The ministry said it had established a committee to investigate the incident and that it would supervise Montoya’s care.

Published in Dawn, June 13th, 2023