China hospital disposes of live baby

BEIJING - Health authorities in south China said Friday they were investigating a hospital medical team for mistakenly diagnosing a stillbirth and disposing of a baby that was alive. The probe is taking place at the Nanhai Red Cross Hospital in the Guangdong provincial city of Foshan where the incident occurred on October 26, the Nanhai district health bureau said in a statement faxed to AFP. According to the statement, Liu Dongmei - eight months pregnant - had been rushed to the hospital with internal bleeding and stomach cramps. She later had an emergency birth, but the baby was neither breathing nor crying after leaving the womb and its skin had turned purple, it said. Believing it was dead, the medical team disposed of the child but did not follow proper hospital procedures, the statement added. The Foshan News, a local website, reported that when Liu's sister-in-law asked to see the body around 30 minutes after birth, she was handed a yellow plastic bag containing the infant and found it was still alive.        "I opened the plastic bag and saw the baby's hands and feet moving, the stomach was going up and down and air bubbles were coming out of his mouth," the paper quoted her as saying. She was further shocked when she saw the baby was a boy - not a girl as the family had been told, it said.