Princess Diana died tragically after a car crash back in August 1997. While her family and the world has not forgotten her, some people are more impacted by her death than others.

One person who will never forget the night of Diana’s death is MonSef Dahman. He was a young duty general surgeon at Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital in Paris at the time, and he ended up being one of the doctors who fought to save her life.

Dahman is haunted by rumors that the staff at the hospital was part of a plot to kill Diana and let the princess die. After all these years, he has decided to speak out to explain what really happened at the hospital that night. In an interview, Dahman explained, “I was resting in the duty room when I got a call from Bruno Riou, the senior duty anaesthetist, telling me to go to the emergency room. I wasn’t told it was Lady Diana, but [only] that there’d been a serious accident involving a young woman.”

It wasn’t until Dahman entered the emergency room that he was told that the young woman was Princess Diana. He explained that the team of doctors fought for over an hour to try to save Diana’s life. For example, she had excess fluid removed from her chest cavity because an x-ray showed that she suffered from internal bleeding. She received blood transfusions as well.

She had previously suffered cardiac arrest on the way to the hospital, and she suffered cardiac arrest again while she was at the hospital. Dahman performed an external heart massage on Diana. He explained, “I did this to enable her to breathe. Her heart couldn’t function properly because it was lacking in blood.”

France’s top heart surgeon at the time, Professor Alain Pavie, received an emergency call at his home where he had been asleep. He arrived at the emergency room to see if he could save the young princess’s life, but in the end, the team of doctors were unsuccessful at getting Diana’s heart to start beating. Dahman explained, “We tried electric shocks, several times and, as I had done in the emergency room, cardiac massage. Professor Riou had administered adrenaline. But we could not get her heart beating again.” He added, “We fought hard, we tried a lot, really an awful lot.” They spent over an hour desperately trying everything possible to save the princess.

Watch the video below to hear more of Dahman’s explanation about what happened when Princess Diana arrived at the hospital.