Bucharest, Jan 19: Two Romanian mothers who were told their premature babies had died in hospital were called in four months later to pick up their children who were in fact alive and well, local media reported.
"Everybody told me the little one was dead," Ramona Ionita told a newspaper.
She said the family was told to come pick up the baby they had "abandoned".
Ionita collected her child but the other mother said she did not believe her baby was still alive and demanded a DNA test.
"I don't believe the baby is mine," 27-year-old Cristina Czuli told Antena 1 private television. "On the discharge letter it was written that ... the baby died."
Authorities have launched an investigation into the incident at the hospital in Ploiesti, around 40 miles north of the capital.
There had been speculation in the Romanian media that baby trafficking was taking place, but the Health Ministry said first inspections showed the incidents were a result of confusion at the hospital.
The European Union has imposed a ban on international adoptions in Romania until the Balkan country closes down its decrepit orphanages and cleans up an adoptions system ridden with corruption since the 1989 collapse of communism.
The hospital was also fined last week and its director replaced after 18 newborns died in six weeks due to improper hygiene.