AN aborted baby declared dead by doctors in south China’s Guangdong Province cried before he was due to be cremated, but died hours later as doctors refused to treat him.

A mortuary worker at Nanhai Funeral Home in Foshan City said the baby cried and scared him as he was about to throw the coffin into a furnace, Information Times reported today.

He opened the box and found the seven-month fetus moving, but apparently choking on some cotton wool in his mouth, the report said.

After the worker cleared his mouth, the baby yawned and breathed peacefully. Workers rushed him back to Guanyao Hospital which delivered the baby as medical waste earlier that day.

But doctors left him in the lobby, and confirmed after an hour that the baby died.

The vice head of the funeral house said Guanyao Hospital sent many aborted fetuses or still-born babies for cremation. This baby apparently survived an abortion at seven months, and he had videos to prove the baby was still alive before the cremation.

Hospital official Liu Sanhong said its staff checked the baby for an hour and made sure it was dead. Liu did not say whether the doctors tried to save the baby or not.

The body was later sent back to the funeral house. The report said all workers were ordered not to talk about the incident.

On March 31, at least 21 fetuses and dead babies were found dumped in a river in east China’s Jining City.

Eight had tabs with clinic code numbers attached to their feet. The Affiliated Hospital of Jining Medical University responsible for the corpses said they were “medical waste.”

Two hospital staffers have been detained while the director and deputy director of the hospital’s logistics department were sacked. A vice president of the hospital was suspended.

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