Son desperate to bring critically ill father home from Thailand to help save him

A man whose father is critically ill in Thailand is desperate to bring him home to the UK to help save his life.

Reginald Leo, 76, moved to Pattaya, a city south of Bangkok, with his wife Valerie last May to join their son Jonathan, 33, who had been living in the country since 2017.

Mr Leo, a retired security officer from Milton Keynes, developed a foot wound which became severely infected a few months after moving east.

He was subsequently diagnosed with sugar diabetes and in November the chronic wound had developed into gangrene, with the pain severely affecting his mobility and desire to eat.

His son Jonathan, who lost his job over the stress of his father’s health decline, is desperate to bring him back to the UK for treatment but faces financial and bureaucratic hurdles.

“It just feels like his retirement dreams have been shattered to pieces,” Jonathan told the PA news agency.

“He’d gone from living a life of 50-plus years working to this.”

By January Mr Leo had lost half his body weight and was diagnosed with Addison’s disease, a rare disorder of the adrenal glands.

He may also require a foot amputation, but due to delays caused by the recent earthquake in Bangkok, his son has been unable to get assistance from the UK embassy.

“My concern is that eventually, we need to get the leg cut off and we need to address his Addison’s disease.

“I need an assessment of what’s going wrong internally as well so I want to get him back to the UK.”

The younger Mr Leo said he has contacted the British Embassy in Bangkok several times for assistance but said they have been slow to get back to him.

He has also spoken to private air ambulance services to see whether his father could be flown back to the UK for treatment, but this would cost between £35,000 and £55,000.

Mr Leo, who had health insurance when he first came to Thailand, chose not to pursue a new policy due to extortionate costs.

“I want to do everything I can to keep my dad alive,” said Mr Leo.

“There is every possibility that he can carry on and that he can recover from this.

“He’s been like this for weeks as a skeleton. I’m pretty sure he’s holding on.”

Mr Leo, who has been feeding, washing and dressing his father’s bandages every day, said it is traumatising to see him like this.

“I can see the tendons, I can see the bones,” he said.

“It is traumatising, because you look at him and you think ‘that was my dad’. He used to be able to walk and he’s pretty much a skeleton now.

“I have problems trying to shave him because I’m literally going up the bone.

“I have to pick him up and hold him while showering him.”

Mr Leo has set up a fundraising page to help support his father’s significant medical costs.

“My only thing I really care about right now is to get the care in place for him, make sure that we get his health back together slightly, at least, and then I can start to rebuild things,” he said.

A Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office spokesperson said: “We are supporting a British man and his family in Thailand and are in touch with the local authorities.”