Two grieving parents have complained after a hospital reportedly gave them a dead rat instead of their newborn baby’s corpse.

Jari Daniela Velez was 28 weeks pregnant when she was admitted to the Tomas Uribe Uribe Hospital in the Colombian city of Tulua to give birth on 15th May.

Sadly, her baby girl, Emily Samara, died during childbirth.

It was the baby’s father, Daniel Alejandro Jaramillo, who discovered the hospital’s epic blunder when he went to the morgue to lay eyes on his deceased daughter before her funeral.

The morgue assistant opened the polystyrene box with the girl’s details on to find inside a red plastic bag in which her remains had ostensibly been stored to hand over to the undertaker.

However, when he opened the bag, he and Daniel saw it contained a pair of latex gloves and a dead rat “the size of an opossum” instead.

The family was disgusted by the blunder, and Jari’s cousin, Majo Velez, took to social media to demand the hospital hand over the baby’s body.

She wrote: “At the hospital they gave us a dead rat; I demand they give us the girl.”

The hospital issued a statement apologising to the family members and informing them that an internal investigation would take place on 17th May.

At the time of reporting, staff at the hospital had not yet been able to locate the baby girl’s body.

Daniel told local news outlet Valle al Instante: “The only thing I ask for is justice and my baby so I can give her a Christian burial.”

The family has reported the hospital to the authorities.