A Spanish woman who brought a baby back to life on board a flight from Gran Canaria has been reliving her lifesaving intervention in media interviews.
Fátima Román, aged 40, and her husband Rafael were flying back home to northern Spain after a holiday in the Canaries when cabin crew made an urgent announcement asking if there was a doctor on board.
When nobody responded to the request, Fátima made herself known to the crew and explained that she works as a healthcare assistant in a care home and had some medical knowledge.
She thought she was going to be asked to help a passenger who was feeling ill or had fainted but to her surprise she was handed the lifeless body of a tiny baby, who had been travelling with its mother in the front rows.
“I did not know what to do at first. I could not detect a pulse anywhere, not in the heart or on its wrist. My training on dummies kicked in and I began to apply a heart massage, using just two fingers as I had been taught. After some time, the baby’s heart began to beat, slowly at first but then at a more normal rate” explained Fátima.
Her job was by no means over. As soon as the baby was breathing properly and stabilised, she was asked by the crew to decide if the baby could continue the journey or whether an emergency landing at the nearest airport was needed.
“If it was my child, I would want the plane to land and that was what I told them” she added.
The plane, carrying 80 passengers, diverted to Jerez on Spain’s south coast, where an ambulance was on hand to rush the baby to hospital.
“A final worry for me was carrying the baby down the steps of the plane as I have a visual impairment and I was terrified I might drop it” said Fátima, who was greeted with rapturous applause when she made her way back on board after her lifesaving intervention.
Having remained calm and in control throughout the 40-minute tense experience, Fátima admits that “the tears flowed” as she realised the enormity of her contribution.
To make matters worse, when the plane eventually resumed its journey, she had to endure a very bumpy landing due to the stormy conditions at Hondarribia airport in the Basque Country.
Fátima, who described the intervention as “the best thing she has ever done”, says she would love to hear from the month-old baby’s mother to know how the resuscitated infant – who she believes to be from a French-speaking family – has been progressing since the in-flight emergency.
