Abderrahmane Mounir

Review of Niyama Island Resort and Spa

We stayed at the Niyama during December 2018. We a...

We stayed at the Niyama during December 2018. We are a family of 5 (3 kids). I will be relaying a very unpleasant experience during the stay and also after the stay. Shortly after our arrival, my son had a gastroenteritis with strong diarrhea, stomach and abdominal cramps, dizziness, vomiting, rashes all over his body and fever. We gave him over the counter medication, but that didn t help, only we found out later that it was a serious condition. Since he didn t get better, we called the doctor in the resort who prescribed antibiotics. The vomiting continued even after leaving the resort at the airport. Although this ruined our stay, we accepted our tough luck and tried to enjoy our stay as much as we could.

That was not the end of it. We came back home and 2 weeks later, we noticed that our son had difficulties to walk, and his lower muscles started getting weak and not functioning. He also started feeling some numbness on his fingers. We were advised to take him to a neurologist. The neurologists were alarmed by his condition and prescribed to conduct immediate medical exams: MRI, NCS and EMG suspecting that his condition could be a dystrophy or multi sclerosis or something similar. After a nightmare that lasted almost 5 days, the doctors came up to the conclusion that it was Guillan-Barre Syndrome (GBS) (an acute inflammatory demyelinating polyradiculoneuropathy syndrome). This is a rare serious neurological condition that damaged our son nervous system and disrupted the communication between his brain and voluntary muscles.

How do you get this? This is a direct consequence of a gastroenteritis caused by a bacterium called a campylobacter. His recovery path was unclear at that time and they prescribed intense physiotherapy for about 10 weeks. Thanks god he got better, and he is recovering now. The timing was bad since he was taking his GCSE mock exams and he could not do any sport. He still cannot practice any sport.

We reported the matter to Niyama resorts and provided all medical proofs that our son condition was triggered following an infection that happened at the resort. They forwarded the matter to their insurance and legal advisors that handled the case in a very poor way. They were not responding in timely manner, missing deadlines, buying time and after waiting for 2 months, they closed the case denying that our son infection has nothing to do with our stay. Somehow, they went back in time and pulled hygiene reports during our stay saying that there is nothing abnormal. What shocked us, they went and asked the staff and maybe pulled CCTV recording and claimed that our son had fun during his stay . That was very insulting and disrespectful towards a family that lived an outrageous fear for more than 2 months. We dealt with them in a very professional way and the least I can stay is that they were amateurs.

Yes, the resort is amazing, but your luck could be like ours. What really bothered us is how such a resort handled the case.