mum who died after wading through filthy puddles on Thailand holiday
https://teakdoor.com/images/smilies1/You_Rock_Emoticon.gif Joanne Cowburn, 47, from Eccles, suffered multi-organ failure in hospital after her illness baffled doctors.
A mum of three who had to walk through sewage-filled puddles on holiday in Thailand died within days of returning home.
Joanne Cowburn, 47, from Eccles, suffered multi-organ failure in hospital after her illness baffled doctors.
An inquest heard she had been forced to walk through dirty water containing sewage on the island of Ko Phi Phi a fortnight into the trip because of torrential rain.
Coroner John Pollard said it was not possible to say whether the infected water had made her sick but added that it was ‘more than likely the underlying cause’. He recorded an open verdict.
Mrs Cowburn, a support worker employed by Trafford Council for people with learning difficulties, had joined daughter Rachael near the end of a four-month tour of South East Asia.
After stays on several islands including Ko Samui, they flew to Ko Phi Phi.
There they had found very poor sanitation and exposed sewage on a ‘beautiful’ island devastated by the 2004 tsunami, Rachael told Stockport Coroners Court. On March 28, after heavy storms, they had to walk through a six-inch-deep puddle of water to get back to their apartment, after her mum had fallen and grazed her knee.
Ms Cowburn said they had no choice because the roads were so narrow, adding: “We didn’t want to because we knew it was pretty filthy water with sewage in it.”
They had to go through filthy water again tw
o days later during a walk around the island
.
Mrs Cowburn, of Peel Green Road in Barton, Eccles, began to feel ill the day after her return – texting a friend to say she had no strength.
She was unable to keep food or water down and visited a sun bed shop to ‘warm her insides up’.
The next day, after researching her symptoms online, she asked to be taken to Trafford General Hospital’s emergency department.
Doctors consulted infectious diseases experts at North Manchester General Hospital but could not find the cause of the former nursing home worker’s illness.
Dr Claire Robertson, an acute medicine clinician who treated Mrs Cowburn, told the inquest she had become overwhelmed by infection, with symptoms including swelling on her face and ankles, and breathlessness.
Mr Pollard said her medical treatment was entirely appropriate and concluded that she had died from multi-organ failure.
He said: “She had been in this place where she was eating different food and the temperature was different, but the really significant thing is that she walked through this infected water, this sewage.”
