British tourist with no insurance stuck in hell hole Thai hospital after falling ill
Friends of a British holidaymaker stuck in a Thai hospital are trying to raise money to bring him home.
Dean Penson, 41, fell sick in Phuket, an island on the southern tip of Thailand, and it’s feared he could be suffering from leukaemia.
But friends say he’s being treated in ‘horrific’ conditions at the local government-run Vachira Phuket Hospital, as he didn’t take out insurance, and they’re trying to raise £10,000 to bring him home.
Dean’s best friend Ben Page, 42, has been with him during his stay at the hospital which he describes as being ‘like the Gaza Strip’ – with puddles of blood on the floor and needles strewn on the ground.
Ben said: ‘It’s pretty horrendous, the conditions are so bad. There’s blood everywhere, there’s needles everywhere.
‘The way I would explain it to people is it’s like The Gaza Strip, but without so much rubble. It feels like the “third world”.
‘There’s blood all over Dean’s bed. There has been blood on the cover since he got there. There’s no toilet roll, you just wash with a hose.
‘And the nurses have messed up so many times. They have pulled a needle out of him, and the blood just pours out.
‘Three people have died next to him over the last three or four days and there are no curtains. The machines are on all night so he can’t sleep.
‘We estimated he’ll need £9,750 for the medical bills and flight.’
Dean, from Southend-on-Sea, had originally flown out to Phuket for a break with a group of mates on November 6.
Ben said he’d urged Dean to take out insurance before leaving, but he worried that he wouldn’t get covered at a reasonable rate as he’d previously broken both his knees.
Dean began to fall unwell on November 15, and his friends took him to hospital near the bustling island’s old town four days later.
Doctors then discovered that he had an extremely low blood count, leading him to have around 20 transfusions over the next ten days.
Ben, who briefly returned to the UK before coming back to be with his friend, said they suspect he may have leukaemia.
He said: ‘He’s just got worse and worse, he’s really anaemic. We’ve been best mates since we were 15. It was just horrendous to see him like this.
‘He couldn’t see well because he had a haemorrhage behind his eyes. That was causing him to bleed from them.
‘His bloods are just so low, which could be leukaemia, but I’m not really sure. He’s had 18-20 bags of blood and platelets. His platelets are just totally depleted.
‘But it’s just horrendous at the hospital. We wouldn’t treat an animal in a vets this way.
‘At one point they smashed his bed against the wall, but he’s a high risk of brain haemorrhage. It’s been horrible seeing him like this.’
Dad of two Ben, who runs the Combat Charity Challenge business, said they were hopeful that Dean would be declared fit enough to fly over the next few days.
But he said that he still faced a startling hospital bill when he returned home, with little hope of being able to pay it off.
He said: ‘The hospital has so far charged around £5,000.
‘He’s obviously run up a bill here that he can’t afford to pay. And he’s going to have to go A&E when he gets back.
‘They are just pumping him full of blood at the moment in the hope that we can bring him home.’
To donate, visit the fundraising page here.
Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at webnews@metro.co.uk.
For more stories like this, check our news page.