British children are on IV drips in Turkish hospitals after falling ill at a five-star TUI resort, with one little girl’s worried mother saying she’s suffered seizures and guests said to be dropping like flies.
The Rixos Sungate Resort saw a spate of food poisonings over the Easter holidays, and now TUI is investigating as Brits staying at the resort for the half term have reported appalling new symptoms.
Jenny Hopkins, from Bagshot, Surrey, told a newspaper outlet her eight-year-old daughter was passing green diarrhoea and became so dehydrated she started fitting.
Jenny Hopkins said she was rushed to the Medical Park Antalya Hospital, where she’s been since Thursday, and has so far been on nine IV drips, and the mother of two said TUI had done very little to help and that she and her husband, James, have had to fork out £3,000 in medical bills so far.
Another mother claimed she was told her daughter’s faeces contained bacteria like salmonella, and that doctors told her lots of people at the all-inclusive hotel had come down with a similar illness.
A video seen by a newspaper outlet showed numerous people being treated in the hotel’s medical centre. Guests have also reported being confined to their rooms in agony, with one newlywed saying his holiday had turned into the honeymoon from hell.
Linda Leitch, one of the distraught mothers whose eight-year-old was rushed to hospital after suffering from dehydration, described the situation at the luxury resort as carnage.
The Leitch family, from Chatham, Kent, say they spent £5,000 on their dream trip, only for their youngest daughter to come down with what Linda believes is food poisoning.
Linda said her daughter started feeling ill at 2 am on Thursday and was violently sick, with severe stomach cramps and a really high temperature.
She said that they put it down to the deserts she ate or the beef because it was the only thing she ate that they didn’t.
Chloe was put on a drip in the hotel’s clinic after severe vomiting and diarrhoea and was unable to keep down water, but her family decided she needed an ambulance at 4 am on Friday after a night of not being very responsive.
The family say they went to the reception in the early hours on Friday after the hotel said they would get them an ambulance.
Half an hour later, they claim, they were told they had to sort out the ambulance themselves, with Cloe not getting to the hospital until 10.30 am.
This is really bad for a 5-star hotel. In fact, it’s bad no matter how many stars the hotel has, but as a 5-star hotel, you would expect the best of the best, not the worst of the worst, and Turkey’s star rating system is clearly lower than in the United Kingdom.
It appears that star ratings mean nothing. Five star doesn’t necessarily mean good hygiene and good food practice. Some stars are added for facilities, conferences, entertainment and multilingual staffing et cetera, and each country has its own criteria for giving stars, and you can’t even trust the reviews these days.
However, this can happen anywhere in the world.
Travel agents should take some accountability. They sold the customer the holiday, so have a contract with the holidaymaker, and they should be ensuring that the hotel is everything it claims to be, and this includes a safe stay.
Good luck getting compensation from TUI because they know the customer’s lawyer’s bill will be higher than the compensation figure so most people will give up.
THE MONTHLY MOSQUITO 