Neglect robbed traveler's chance of survival says sister

A New Zealander who died after contracting a deadly disease while holidaying in Egypt was given antibiotics more than two years out of date and ignored by doctors in his final hours, his sister says.

John Fitzgerald, aged 28, a London-based architect, died on December 30 in an air ambulance on his way to hospital in Austria after contracting meningococcal septicaemia.

His sister, London lawyer Sally Fitzgerald, said Egyptian doctors, the tour firm and the travel insurer her brother used robbed him of the chance to survive.

"We feel John was let down by a number of parties and we're considering our position in relation to them," she said last night after returning to the family's home in Manakau, near Levin.

Ms Fitzgerald said the family were devastated by Mr Fitzgerald's death and angry about events leading up to it.

"We're a very small family, just Mum, Dad, myself, and there was John, so it's leaving a very big hole in the family," she said. "But we are also angry at what went on.

"It is a very deadly disease, but the combination of the complete lack of treatment he received from the Egyptian medical authorities, the abandonment by the tour company ... and the delays we perceive in getting an air ambulance to John contributed to us losing any opportunity at all to see whether or not he could have survived."

Ms Fitzgerald said her brother's travelling companions, including a New Zealand doctor, were appalled by the Egyptian medical care.

"The people who were with John brought back with his possessions two of the antibiotic bottles that had been given to John ... and they had expiry dates on them of more than two years ago.

"In those sorts of countries you cannot expect the same level of medical care as, say, in America or England, but it was the complete dismissal, the obstruction, the lies and the complete failure to treat John at all in the last hours ... "

British embassy officials in Cairo, and Mr Fitzgerald's travel insurer, American Express, are investigating the circumstances of his death.

Dr Iman Zaget, a senior Egyptian official involved in the case, said Egyptian authorities were considering how to respond to allegations they had mishandled the case.

- NZPA