Five-star Egypt holiday leaves young woman with life-threatening illness
A young British woman who was left fighting for her life after she suffered severe kidney problems following a summer holiday in Egypt is taking legal action against the hotel she stayed in.
Nicola Collings, 23, travelled to the all-inclusive Siva Sharm Resort & Spa in Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt, last August with travel company Red Sea Holidays UK Limited.
But her dream holiday soon became a holiday from hell.
On the day she landed home, she became severely ill with gastric symptoms, and just two days later she was fighting for her life.
She was admitted to hospital and, after having her appendix removed because of suspected appendicitis, blood tests revealed that Nicola was suffering from Haemolytic Uremic Syndrome (HUS) and Thrombotic Thrombocytopenic Purpura (TTP) – conditions which caused her blood to fail and her kidney function to go down.
She was given emergency dialysis and a blood transfusion at Heartlands Hospital in Birmingham, and began to recover, but needed two more weeks in hospital as well as further dialysis and blood transfusions.
Nicola, a hotel reception manager from Birmingham, needed two months off work and is still suffering the effects of the infection. She has instructed specialist international personal injury lawyers to investigate the cause of her illness. >
Speaking in the he Solihull Observer, Nicola said: "The months following my return to the UK were absolutely terrifying as doctors only gave me a small chance of surviving my condition.
"I'm lucky really that I don't have to be on dialysis all my life but I shouldn't be in this situation at all.
"I also have to be careful about my health as my immune system is not that great and so I tend to get ill easily.
"When you go on holiday you are supposed to come back feeling refreshed but I ended up fighting for my life. I'm desperate to know what caused my illness as there could be other people affected who might not be as lucky as I was in surviving my condition."
Nicola has instructed specialist international personal injury lawyers at Irwin Mitchell to investigate the cause of her illness.
The law firm is also representing other holidaymakers who also travelled to the resort in the summer of 2014 who also fell ill.
Nicola said that while on her holiday she had been concerned to see on a number of instances how staff washed glasses in water with no cleaning products, and that food was recycled at different meal times, as the same foods appeared on the menu at later sittings and food was sometimes served uncovered and luke-warm and cutlery was dirty.
Nicola also reported that the pool area was sometimes dirty and the pool water was murky and told lawyers that she had heard others complaining about how dirty the pool was.
Amandeep Samra, an expert holiday illness lawyer at Irwin Mitchell, said: "As we conduct our investigations we would urge anyone who stayed at the Siva Sharm Hotel and who may be able to provide information about the conditions there to get in contact with us as soon as possible."
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