Mother takes her own life after daughter dies from botched Turkish weight-loss surgery

Twenty-year-old Morgan Ribeiro, a nursery worker from Croydon, flew to Istanbul on 5 January 2024 for a low-cost gastric band surgery at Medivita Hospital, paying £2,500 instead of the £8,000-£10,000 typical UK price. Three days later she was cleared to fly home despite abdominal pain and fever, but her condition worsened on the flight, prompting an emergency landing in Belgrade where doctors discovered a ruptured intestinal wall and performed emergency surgery.

She died on 13 January from peritonitis caused by the rupture. An inquest into her death, set for May, was delayed because the surgeon, Dr Serkan Bayil, could not be traced; it eventually occurred on 4 September. Two days after the original inquest date, Erin Gibson, Morgan’s mother, was found dead by suicide in her Anerley home, with her ex-husband Richard Ribeiro saying the stress of pursuing justice contributed to her death. The case has raised concerns about medical-tourism safety and the accountability of overseas clinics.