AN INVESTIGATION HAS been launched after a premature baby was found alive in an Argentine morgue 12 hours after being pronounced dead by doctors.

The baby girl, who was born three months premature, was put in a coffin in a refrigerated room in the morgue, after doctors at the Perrando de Resistencia hospital in Chaco, northern Argentina, declared her stillborn.

The child’s mother, Analia Bouter, had not been given the opportunity to hold the baby after giving birth as she had been sedated, and insisted on viewing her body in the morgue, according to SkyNews.

It was only after she and her husband prised the lid off the coffin holding their baby that they realised something was wrong. Bouter said she thought she was hallucinating when she noticed her daughter breathing and beginning to whimper, the BBC reports.

Doctors have said that the girl is now doing well – but that they are mystified as to how the newborn survived for so long in a refrigerated room.