The prematurely born baby declared dead at Dhaka Medical College Hospital (DMCH) on Saturday, breathed his last yesterday and was buried at Azimpur graveyard shortly afterwards.

The DMCH doctors had declared him dead for the second time barely 24 hours after he was put on assisted ventilation - a facility the baby needed soon after his birth but was not provided with at first.

"If he had received proper treatment right after his birth, he might have survived," the dead baby's uncle Mohammad Masud said.

The boy born at DMCH Friday midnight was not given any ICU support for

the first 12 hours. He weighed around 1.2kg at birth and was born with respiratory complications, Prof Ferdousi Islam, head of Obstetrics and Gynaecology of the DMCH, said.

In an obvious negligence of duty, DMCH doctors declared him dead Saturday morning when the baby was still alive.

Around three hours later as the family was preparing to bury the child at Azimpur Graveyard, the boy's uncle Mahmudul Karim - who was holding the boy- realised that baby was moving.

The baby was rushed to DMCH and this time put on assisted ventilation.

This death follows another incident a short while ago at the hospital when a woman was found alive in the morgue three hours after being declared dead by DMCH doctors. The woman aged around 45, whose identity could not be known, diedaday lateral the hospital.

The incidents again raised serious questions about the way in which government doctors deal with poor patients. This has been a complaint against the hospital for a long time but

not paid much heed to by the state.

Mushfiqur Rahman, deputy director of DMCH, confirmed that the baby boy died at the hospital's neonatal unit around 11:00am yesterday.

He said the hospital would find out the people responsible for declaring the child dead on Saturday and take stern action against them. The DMCH has already formed a four-member committee to probe the incident.

Doctors at the hospital said they could not provide the newborn with ICU support on Saturday as there were “no vacant" incubators at the time. The doctors claimed that they suggested the family move the infant to another hospital for this.

But the family could not afford to do so.

The very Azimpur Graveyard where the baby was taken wrongly for burial around Saturday noon became his final destination yesterday when the grieving family buried him around noon.

The newborn proved through his death yesterday that he had been alive all along.