Nigerian mum of quintuplets let off £145,000 NHS bill: Health tourist who came to UK to give birth says no one's asked her to pay

A Nigerian health tourist who cost the NHS £145,000 having quintuplets has said she never even saw a bill.

Bimbo Ayelabola, 37, had to have a complex caesarean section after travelling to Britain while pregnant in 2011.

The operation and neo-natal care for the five babies cost the Health Service in excess of £145,000 – but Miss Ayelabola never paid a penny towards the bill.

And now it has emerged the hospital involved will not chase her for the money.

Miss Ayelabola has since returned to her home city of Lagos, where she is a successful make-up artist who drives a £17,000 car. 

When confronted by the Daily Mail about the NHS bill, she said: ‘I have never received my bill. If I had it, I would pay it.’

The hospital involved yesterday admitted it sent only one request for payment, more than six months after Miss Ayelabola left the hospital – and had failed to take any further action when it was returned unpaid.

t said it would not be pursuing Miss Ayelabola for the money, even after the Daily Mail offered to pass on her address.

The case follows a series of revelations by the Mail on the true scale of health tourism in Britain. NHS whistleblowers have told how bosses are instructing them to turn a blind eye to health tourists because it is ‘too much trouble’ to chase them for money.

Only around 16 per cent of the cost of treating health tourists is ever clawed back, according to NHS estimates.

The Nigerian mother obtained a visitor’s visa soon after discovering she was pregnant in 2010, travelling to the UK to stay with her younger sister, Stella, early in her pregnancy.

She gave birth to two boys and three identical girls at Homerton Hospital in Hackney, East London, in April 2011 – seven weeks premature. She had a complex caesarean and remained in hospital for almost two weeks after the birth at a cost of £145,000 to UK taxpayers.

Despite having an expired visa, Miss Ayelabola continued living in her sister’s flat in Poplar, East London, after the births. She didn’t return home until February 2013.

Miss Ayelabola’s children are now four years old and attending a private school. When she was tracked down by the Mail to the small salon she shares with other beauticians, she said she did not understand what she had done wrong. ‘What is it that’s my fault? I don’t understand,’ she said.  

In an interview in 2011 Miss Ayelabola said: ‘I had already had miscarriages and couldn’t bear the stress another pregnancy would cause. So I decided to visit my family in London.

‘I thought I would stand a much better chance of avoiding another miscarriage in a calmer place with friends and family.’

However, when speaking to the Mail she denied coming to the UK to give birth. She claimed she had no idea she was expecting more than one child and was planning to return to Nigeria to have the babies – until she had medical complications. ‘I stayed after my children were born because my kids were sick,’ she said.

The multiple births are likely to be a result of double doses of fertility drug Clomid, which she took for eight times longer than recommended after buying the pills over the counter in Lagos.

Miss Ayelabola is understood to have left the UK voluntarily in February 2013, following contact with the Home Office. It is believed she has been banned from returning to Britain for five years.

The UK’s system for flagging up foreign patients sees them treated before hospital staff try to claw back costs.

In France, Germany and Scandinavia, patients must pay in advance. It means hospitals across England are targeted by thousands of health tourists a year.

Daily Mail