Carretera Uvero Alto,
Punta Cana,
23000
La Altagracia,
Dominican Republic
We (my partner and I) arrived to the Dominican Republic on Sunday afternoon (4th July) for a one-week-long vacation at Excellence El Carmen. I was deliberately poisoned there with salmonella and entamoeba histolytica and I also got a respiratory infection. As crazy as it sounds, it seemed as though they were counting on tourists to get sick, to pay (either directly or through an insurance) the overpriced bills for the medical consultation, medicine, ambulance transportation, hospital admission, and tests.
I was taken by ambulance to Hospiten Bávaro on Wednesday (7th July). During this time, we have been speaking with several doctors in Canada and we were told that I clearly had food poisoning symptoms. Even though we requested a salmonella test, the doctor at the Hospiten Bávaro refused to do so and also confirmed that I do not have salmonella (which we have on voice recording). We assume that the hospital was collaborating with the resort, and therefore the doctor refused to do a proper diagnosis about my case. After leaving the hospital on Friday (9th July), we visited a private lab in the Domincan Republic, where they did the tests we requested (following medical advice from Canada). The salmonella test came back positive. It also showed that I have entamoeba histolytica, which is a very dangerous parasite.
When we tried to get a reimbursement from the hotel management for our medical expenses and for our holiday, management was more than prepared to deal with this (in a negative way). They sent countless other people to speak with us. After a few minutes of talking with each of them, they would say that we had to speak with someone else. We would then have to wait a long time for the next person to arrive, listen to our problem, and, once again, pass on our problem to somebody else.
Eventually, we talked to a person, who spoke relatively good English. He argued that the resort was not liable for any of this, as none of the diagnoses listed on my final report from Hospiten Bávaro suggested that the resort was at fault for my health conditions. He made this argument without seeing my final report from the hospital. This explains why the doctor at Hospiten Bávaro refused to write anything concrete on my report or even to order a salmonella test on our request, as doing so would have put the resort at risk of liability. We have requested a document from him acknowledging that our discussion had taken place, and confirming that they were unwilling to help. However, he tried to avoid this in various ways. When we suggested that we would confirm my salmonella diagnosis by doing a test in Canada, he found excuses for the resort, saying that, if the issue was real, there would have been an outbreak at the hotel. This is a valid point, and it is one of the reasons I believe I was deliberately poisoned. At one point, he was saying they doesn't have any relationship with Hospiten Bávaro ("they are a third party company" as per the voice recording) but at the same time he had quite a lot of information on our case (information that could only be access by Hospiten Bávaro). Members of staff I had never seen before, including waitresses and management, were too familiar with my case as well. He had a very unprofessional style, he was even smiling at one point, as he probably exactly knew what was going on. He explained that they are a "high-end company" with high standard and that something like this couldn't happen on their resort.
Please read the below to better understand the horrible experience we had to go through.
By Tuesday afternoon (6th July), I started feeling sick with a very intense sore throat, and I felt a burn in my nose. By the evening, I felt so sick that I had to visit the doctor at the resort, who checked my vital signs and recommended taking two medications: Kamillosan spray and Subrox C Jarabe. I was charged 372 USD for the 15-minute visit and the two medications.
By the morning, I had developed a high fever and started vomiting. I had an intense grass green colored and "water-like" diarrhea (the odor was horrible). I was no longer able to walk, so we requested to see the doctor once again in our room. We were told that she needed to go to two other rooms before she could come to ours. She arrived after an hour and she prescribed two different pills, one for the fever and one antibiotic. We paid a further 86 USD for 15 tablets of acetaminophen mk 500mg and 15 tablets of Clavulin C/12. The doctor explained that I could take a Covid test if I wanted to (she made it seem as though it was optional), but also informed us that we might end up locked up in the hospital and could be liable to pay up to 1000 USD a day there for medical expenses. If they had honestly believed that I had Covid, I assume they would have been super careful, and wouldn’t have allowed me to leave my room. In other words, the Covid test would not have been optional. The doctor at the resort barely spoke English, therefore communication was very difficult. Although I was taking the medication as advised, my condition got worse. I was dealing with pretty much constant diarrhea and high fever (between 39.5 and 41 Celsius) for the rest of the day. By the afternoon my fever went up to 41, I was unconscious, completely unable to move, and shaking all the time, so I needed to go to the hospital. The resort’s doctor gave my partner, a paper with the resort’s insurance details, explaining that we wouldn’t have to pay anything at the hospital other than the ambulance transportation and a Covid test.
They called an ambulance for us, and gave me some kind of intravenous medication. The ambulance transported us to Hospiten Bávaro, where I was placed in a small room in the emergency department. The doctor came in to see me, however, she did not really ask for my symptoms, she didn't ask what we did recently, what we ate or anything like that. Instead, she immediately told me that I probably have COVID-19, although my symptoms were different and I am also fully vaccinated with the Pfizer vaccine. They did a COVID-19 test. They also took my blood, a urine and stool sample, and did a CT scan. As expected, the Covid test came back negative. I believe the medical staff already knew that it was not Covid, as they barely took any precautions. They also took off their mask several times near me. It seems like they just wanted to scare us and force us to pay for an overpriced Covid-19 test.
She also immediately told us that I probably caught some infection at the airport, because - quoting her - “there are a lot of people at the airport”. It honestly felt that the doctor wanted to avoid communicating anything that had to do with the resort, and that was why she referred to the airport and airplane immediately. We travel very frequently, we have visited over 40 countries and have never had any serious health issues. It is also worth mentioning that we were flying to Punta Cana from Toronto, and there were very few people both at the airport and on the flight. I only consumed bottled water and a pretzel on the airplane/airport and went straight to the hotel when we landed.
Communication and transparency were barely existent during this time in the hospital, and my partner constantly had to chase doctors, nurses, and the reception to get some progress or an update. The medical staff was constantly on their personal phones, chatting and having coffee, they didn't appear interested in helping us. We were not provided with any results from all the other tests, nor were we told what we were waiting for or given an update on what was happening. He chased the doctor several times, and, finally, she told him that I had a stomach infection and I had a high white blood cell count, but the doctor gave me no information or diagnosis whatsoever. The doctor then advised us that they would need to admit me to the hospital, but would be unable to do so until the insurance confirmed my coverage. He tried to follow up with the hospital reception about what was going on with the insurance, and the receptionist advised that they said they couldn’t cover us and they would need to confirm something. He explained that we were advised by the resort that we wouldn’t need to pay anything. The reception said that, if we wanted admission to the hospital, we would need to pay 4000 USD up front immediately. He then insisted that the receptionist follows up with the resort’s insurance provider, and about half an hour later they confirmed that they would cover my admission to the hospital. They made him sign a few documents, then he had to pay 500 USD for the Covid test and ambulance transportation. Then they took me to a room on the second floor and gave me intravenous medication without letting me know what they were treating me with or how they were planning to treat me. However, the doctor was very quick at treating me and looking back now, she knew exactly what antibiotics I needed. Had they analyzed my stool sample within hours and diagnosed me with salmonella and entamoeba histolytica without telling me, or did they knew how to treat me immediately given that I was poisoned deliberately?
My diarrhea that night was so watery that it was coming out from me uncontrollably. I was lying in it in my bed, absolutely helpless. I somehow managed to get to the bathroom on my own with the infusion to try to clean myself up. My partner visited me in the hospital the next day, on Thursday the 8th of July, and he asked the doctor to have a chat with us. We have asked what my health issue was, when I was expected to recover, and what could have caused this issue. She would not answer any of the questions with a proper, clear, and transparent answer. This was not because of her English language skills - she simply didn’t want to tell us what is going on. She lied about several things. She said that, because I had antibiotics in my body, the bloodwork would not be accurate. She also said that she didn’t know what my diagnosis was. Then she told me it was the flu. When I asked her about what could have caused the diarrhea, if it was possible that it was caused by food poisoning, she said it might be the antibiotics, although this symptom started before I started to take antibiotics. She said it was not possible that it would be from food. As we later discovered, she was lying to our faces: she knew exactly what my diagnosis was, because she was treating me with the right antibiotics.
At this point, we really got suspicious. We did some research online and we found that quite a few tourists reported similar cases on TripAdvisor, Google reviews, and other forums. They stated that they had salmonella and Norwalk virus. Some also talked about the fact that, whoever is behind this, is counting on that to hurt the incoming tourist for the insurance money. After all this, my family organized help and they sent a translator to the hospital who helped me check myself out against medical advice. Of course, the hospital did not want me to leave - they wanted more insurance money to cover their overpriced expenses. The doctor even lied about my fever stating that it was higher than it actually was. I had a high-end thermometer with me, so I knew for a fact that my temperature was below 38. Our translator helped me translate the final report that the hospital provided. Based on the report that they gave me, my exact diagnosis was a high fever, respiratory infection, a stomach infection, and dehydration. I asked for a salmonella test, however the doctor refused to do one: I asked her if it was possible that I had salmonella and she stated no (I have recorded this interaction, and have it on tape). Our helper then took me to a private lab, where they took my bloodwork, urine, and stool sample (for only 35 USD). The result came back on Sunday, before our plane took off (11th July). My salmonella test was positive and in addition it showed that I have entamoeba histolytica parasite. Before we left, we tried to talk with the management, as explained above.
Update from Canada (12th July):
I have visited one of the best emergency departments in a Toronto-based hospital, and based on the private lab results they confirmed that I have salmonella and entamoeba histolytica. It is worth mentioning that in Toronto I was prescribed the same antibiotic for the entamoeba histolytica that I was prescribed at Hospiten Bávaro (metronidazole 500mg). If the doctor at Hospiten Bávaro knew that I needed that antibiotic, she knew that I had entamoeba (as that is one of the few health issues metronidazole is used for). This proves that she tried to cover up my diagnosis, even though she had known what my problem was since the first night I was admitted to the hospital.
In addition, I believe I was poisoned on purpose for the money of the medical bills. Everything that the doctor and the hotel management said to us was scripted. They knew exactly what they are doing and what they had to say. If salmonella were an issue in the hotel, there would be an outbreak. However, only a few tourists get it once in a while in this hotel. Also, the doctor knew too quickly how she needed to treat me. It would have taken more than a couple of hours to analyze a stool sample.
The day before I got sick, a bartender, randomly asked for our room number. We asked her why, but she could not explain and eventually said that she was conducting a little survey on whether people are satisfied with the service or not. She wrote down our room number on a piece of paper after asking about where we are from. The day I got back from the hospital, the guy who was filling up the minibars, who I had never seen before, asked me if I was okay. He knew “that I am the one who was in the hospital”. I asked him how he knew, but he would not answer. | Symptoms: Nausea, Diarrhea, Vomiting, Fever, Other, Dehydration, Shaking, Sore Throat, Soreness
