High Court action over Cape Verde tourist deaths

The deaths of six British people who had gone on holiday to Cape Verde have sparked a “bombshell legal move” against the TUI tourism group, said The Sun. UK law firm Irwin Mitchell says it has launched High Court proceedings on behalf of “hundreds” of holidaymakers who “fell ill during or shortly after” taking a package holiday to Cape Verde between 2022 and 2025.

The 10 volcanic islands that make up Cape Verde, 350 miles to the west of Senegal in the Atlantic Ocean, have become an increasingly popular sunshine destination for European tourists seeking a cheaper alternative to the Caribbean. But there is trouble in paradise.

Who has died?

In a three-month period last year, four Brits died in Cape Verde “after falling ill and receiving poor medical care in local hospitals”, said The Sunday Times. They were aged between 54 and 64 and all had “underlying but manageable health conditions”. They “died of various medical complications”, including gastroenteritis, fractured bones and heart failure. All were staying in a Riu hotel that was part of a Spanish chain of six resorts in Cape Verde, when they first fell ill.

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Elena Walsh was one of the four. She caught a stomach bug shortly after arriving. She was taken to hospital, where doctors thought she had appendicitis and took her to the operating theatre. She died two days later. A post-mortem in the UK concluded there was nothing wrong with her appendix, and listed heart failure and gastroenteritis as the causes of death.

Two other Brits have died, and more than 1,500 British tourists, including children, have fallen ill in Cape Verde since 2022.

Why are tourists getting sick?

Many of those who became unwell reported severe gastric illness. Late last year, the UK Health Security Agency spotted an increase in diagnoses of shigella, a gastrointestinal bacteria that can cause severe diarrhoea, fever, stomach cramps and, in rare cases, sepsis. Further investigation linked the outbreak to Cape Verde: 80% of the 137 people affected between October and December had travelled to the islands.

Shigella bacteria can spread easily through contact with traces of faeces from an infected person on food, in water, on fingers and on surfaces. An infection can be “nasty” and “a killer in some cases”, Brendan Wren, a professor at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, told The Sunday Times, but mostly “it goes away within two or three days”.

Food hygiene standards at the Riu Palace Santa Maria, where all of the claimants in the current lawsuit were staying, have come under scrutiny, as well as the level of medical care available on Cape Verde. UK Foreign Office travel advice warns that healthcare on the islands “is very basic and limited”, and The Sun has reported tourists describing “‘war zone’ hospitals, flooded with patients”.

What are the lawsuits?

Several other group action lawsuits “are expected to be listed at the High Court in the coming months”, said The Sun.

The current one involves over 300 Brits who fell ill after staying at Riu Palace in 2022. Some reported contracting bacterial infections, such as E. coli, salmonella or shigella; others had parasitic infections, such as cryptosporidium. Many required hospital treatment abroad or on their return home. They include 62-year-old Jane Pressley, who fell ill with symptoms of gastric illness days into her holiday in 2022, and died three weeks after coming home.

Their claim alleges that TUI “breached its legal duties” as a tour operator “by failing to protect holidaymakers from illness and by not ensuring that hotel and swimming pool facilities were maintained to reasonable standards of cleanliness”.

TUI is contesting the allegations. Together with Riu Hotels & Resorts, it issued a statement saying that both companies were “deeply saddened” by the deaths, and offering “heartfelt condolences to the families affected”.