Stranded in Egypt, rider who broke back in fall
A BRITISH woman who may be paralysed after she was crushed falling from a horse in Egypt has been left stranded in the country.
Olivia Fairclough had been working at a stables in Cairo when her horse bolted, flinging her off and falling on her.
Her family has been left facing a £32,000 bill for the care she has received so far and to cover her future flight back to the UK because her travel insurance expired a few weeks before the accident.
The experienced rider, 31, is still in a hospital in Cairo and has been denied further life-changing treatment until she can pay for it.
Miss Fairclough’s brother Trevor, 28, said her family fear she may be wheelchair-bound for the rest of her life following the accident 11 days ago.
He said: ‘Her back is broken, but they [the hospital] won’t do anything until the money is paid upfront. She has broken ribs, damage to her spinal cord and a punctured lung. She is stable, but she’s not in a good condition.
‘We have communicated on Facebook as she can’t talk much on the phone and she is scared.’
He told friends that Miss Fairclough, from Eaglescliffe, County Durham, lost track of when to renew her insurance. He described it as an ‘easy oversight due to the longevity of her stay in Egypt’.
Their parents Grace, 62, and Brian, 68, faced having to find £2,500 for her operation, £1,000 for additional costs and £26,000 for an air ambulance to bring her back to the UK.
But it seems a large part of the bill will be met thanks to the kindness of strangers, as a Go Fund Me page set up online by her brother has raised more than £25,000 of its £32,000 target in just seven days.
Mr Fairclough said of the funding campaign: ‘It’s overwhelming. People, complete strangers, have really come together. The response has been phenomenal – but we’re not out of the woods just yet.’
Miss Fairclough left the UK last year to work as a receptionist at the Hilton hotel in Sharm el-Sheikh.
But, when the tourism industry began to flag, she moved to Cairo where she taught children English and worked at the stables.
Mr Fairclough said: ‘She’s very bubbly. She loves children and ani- mals and has a life-long love of horses – she used to watch Black Beauty as a kid. She’d work with disabled children at the stables.
‘This goes to show that anything can happen and you should always be prepared.
‘We’ve been completely blindsided by this and it’s been really tough.’
A Foreign Office spokesman said: ‘We have visited a British national in hospital in Cairo, Egypt, and will continue to support them however possible.’