'Dead' Man Found Alive Days After His Funeral, Family Calls It 'Medical Negligence'

A 79-year-old man was found alive days after he was reported dead at a hospital in Russia. His family has blamed the hospital for "medical negligence" and "incompetence."

Grigory Vasilyev was taken to a Moscow region hospital on May 12 because of a limb impairment and slurred speech. He was diagnosed with a stroke, his granddaughter said. Five days later, the hospital informed Vasilyev's family that he had died.

"When my mom, dad and brother saw the body, they all said it wasn't him," the granddaughter, identified as Varvara Korchashkina, wrote in a Facebook post last week. "The pathologist began to show tags and documents where it was written that it was Grigory Mikhailovich Vasilyev, and explained that a person changes very much after death, stroke and trepanation of the skull during autopsy."

Not just the family members, even those who attended his funeral could hardly believe it was Vasilyev's body. They said it did not look like Vasilyev, Korchashkina added.

Two days later, the hospital called the buried man's family and told them their relative was ready for discharge after recovery. It was then that they realized there was a mix-up.

"If the person had no relatives, we would not have known that we had buried the wrong person and that our grandfather was alive," the granddaughter said.

Apparently, a nurse had swapped the beds of Vasilyev and another bedridden patient from the same ward. She forgot to report it to the officials.

"When the man died, he died on my grandfather's bed," Korchashkina wrote in the post. "This is a story about human stupidity, medical negligence, incompetence and the complete collapse of the healthcare system."

Vasilyev has to be transferred from the Solnechnogorsk hospital to a rehabilitation center. However, as the documents now state him dead, the family is urging authorities to restore his rights, Moscow Times reported.

On Monday, Korchashkina wrote on her Facebook that a court hearing was scheduled for June 11 regarding the incident. "If everything goes well, a decision will be made to restore his rights with immediate enforcement," she said.