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Brit Dies In Egypt After Hospital Turn Off Life Support Because Family 'Couldn't Afford' £7,000 Bill

Brit Dies In Egypt After Hospital Turn Off Life Support Because Family 'Couldn't Afford' £7,000 Bill

Adrian King died in Egypt last year and his family says the hospital switched off his life support without their permission

Stewart Perrie

Stewart Perrie

The family of one British man has been left furious after he died in an Egyptian hospital because staff switched off his life support without their permission. The hospital claims Adrian King suffered a cardiac arrest, but the family have told courts it's because they couldn't immediately pay a £7,000 bill.

Thirty-nine-year-old Adrian became strangely ill when he was holidaying with his friend Nicola Wright while in Hurghada, on Egypt's east coast. He fell unconscious and was being treated in hospital, but when staff found out his insurance had been voided, they demanded his family start fronting up the cash.

An inquest has been told the insurance was null due to King not declaring he had a bacterial infection in his stomach two years before his trip.

Adrian's dad Charles Bumford told the hearing: "A man at the hospital stood in my son's room and told me: 'The insurance is null and void - you pay now or I switch off the machines.'

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"I didn't have the £7,000 ($9,800) he was asking for at that time. As he walked out of the room he started switching things off."

Charles added that he tried contacting the hospital '50 times' but he never received an answer. The friend Adrian was with at the time, Nicola, was similarly confused by the situation occurring in the medical facility.

"They did the second dialysis and then said that the insurance was voided," she told the inquest.

"They never said he had a cardiac arrest or anything, they said it was stopping, because the funding was stopped.

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"That's when they said they wouldn't do anymore dialysis and from there he passed away."

No autopsy was conducted on Adrian because doctors were able to declare his cause of death was a cardiac arrest.

When Adrian eventually died in May last year, Egyptian authorities embalmed his body for it to be repatriated back to the UK so he could be buried. That process caused even more heartache for the King family, as they had to raise enough money to pay for their son's body to be transported back home.

Coroner Andrew Haigh delivered a pretty stinging verdict at the end of the inquest, saying: "The cause of his death is a combination of kidney failure, the collapse in the hot desert, followed by limited medical treatment.

"I do propose sending a report to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in this country.

"There is the potential there could be further casualties."

Featured Image Credit: Facebook/Getty

Topics: UK News, Travel Insurance, News, egypt, Hospital, Health