A heartbroken dad who was taking his supposedly dead baby to a cemetery to be buried after hospital doctors told him and his wife that it was stillborn was shocked to hear it crying in the car on the way there.

Medics at the Yuregir State Hospital in the city of Adana, the capital of Adana Province, in south-central Turkey, had even issued a death certificate after coming to the conclusion that the baby, who was born in the fifth month of pregnancy, was dead.

Mum Melek Sert, 32, had been experiencing pain and went to hospital on 27th December. She was treated before being discharged on 30th December. But she fell ill again on 31st December and was taken to the Seyhan State Hospital, where her condition deteriorated on 2nd January.

Doctors told her that she was “having a miscarriage”, explaining that her baby was “dead”.

The baby was delivered naturally and was declared dead by the doctors. Dad Hasan Sert then took the supposedly dead baby to the cemetery for it to be buried, but on the way there it suddenly started crying.

The baby is now fighting for its life in intensive care, and the stunned dad, who has said that anyone wanting to help and who has a 0 Rh-negative blood type, can donate their blood to his baby.

He said: “My baby is fighting for his life. Since we haven’t given him a name yet, donors can give blood for the Sert baby.”

An investigation has been launched by the authorities against the hospital in a bid to determine if any negligence had taken place.