Fritzl daughter to be woken from coma

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Doctors treating the 19-year-old daughter of incest

offender Josef Fritzl have initiated the phase to bring her out of her

artificially-induced coma.

Kerstin Fritzl has been treated in an Austrian hospital after

suffering a multiple organ failure following an oxygen deficiency caused by

severe cramp attacks, which prompted doctors to put her into an artificial coma

in order to keep her vital functions steady.

But staff at the Amstetten Regional Clinic have started

reducing her medication with the intention of bringing her out of her coma

after her condition improved.

Hospital spokesman Klaus Schwertner said: ‘Kerstin is still in a coma but

her condition has been gradually improving and doctors have initiated the

wake-up phase.

‘It is at this stage impossible to tell how long it would take before she

wakes up, as that is always an individual thing with coma patients.

‘It is expected that it will take some weeks before she actually wakes up,

but it could also take longer than that. But her condition is now steady and

doctors are very optimistic about the future development.’

Kerstin is one of the seven children Josef Fritzl, 73, an engineer and

property developer, fathered with his own daughter Elisabeth, 42, whom he kept

as his personal sex slave in a purpose-built dungeon beneath his home for over

24 years.

One of the children, a baby boy called Michael, died shortly after birth and

Fritzl burned his body in an incinerator.

Fritzl selected three of the children, Lisa, 15, Monika, 14, and Alexander,

12, to live with him and his wife Rosemarie, 68, in their upstairs apartment in

the town of Amstetten.

The other three children, Kerstin, Stefan, 18, and Felix, five, were forced

to live in the damp cellar beneath with their mother, never seeing the light of

day until police revealed the case on 26 April.

The case came to light after Fritzl was forced to take Kerstin to a hospital

and medical staff there alerted the authorities.

Tuesday 27 May 2008

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