A devoted grandma, Jane Pressley loved nothing more than messy baking sessions with her three grandchildren by her eldest daughter Lucy, and browsing newborn baby clothes for her heavily pregnant second daughter Porcia.
She enjoyed rock music and painting her nails turquoise, and – while family came first – she looked forward every year to a winter holiday to celebrate her December birthday.
In November 2022 Jane and husband Michael flew to the West African archipelago Cape Verde, where the white sands and turquoise waters offered an idyllic respite from the bleak British weather. Their package holiday to the five-star Riu Palace Resort on the island of Santa Maria, which boasted six swimming pools and a spa, was ‘a cracking deal’ she told her two daughters excitedly.
‘She always made sure everyone else was looked after, so this was a big deal for her,’ says Lucy, 40.
Only days into her holiday, however, Jane fell ill with vomiting and diarrhoea – and never recovered.
She died three weeks later, aged 62, on the respiratory ward of Lincoln County Hospital, in the UK. ‘I was holding her hand,’ says Lucy. ‘She had a tear in her eye, and she just went cold.’
Jane’s death would be shocking enough as an isolated occurrence.
In fact, five more Britons have died since then following illnesses contracted in Cape Verde, with four of them losing their lives in the space of just four months last year. Many more have fallen seriously ill.
Grandmother Jane Pressley, pictured with her partner Darren Cartwright, died weeks after a family holiday in Cape Verde. It would be shocking enough as an isolated occurrence, but several more Britons have died or fallen ill after visiting the same region
Michael, who was also sick on the holiday, is now among some 1,700 people taking legal action against holiday provider Tui, with whom he and Jane had booked.
They allege Tui failed to provide safe food, drink and hotel facilities in ten hotels in the country.
All became ill either during or soon after their holiday. Some were diagnosed with bacterial infections such as shigella and salmonella, both of which in extreme cases can cause dysentery, sepsis and organ failure, and most had been staying in a Riu hotel, a Spanish chain with six resorts in Cape Verde.
The UK Health Security Agency has identified 118 cases of shigella and 43 cases of salmonella linked to trips to the country since last October.
Lawyer Jatinder Paul, representing the claimants for law firm Irwin Mitchell, said the number of holidaymakers being struck down with gastric illnesses in Cape Verde is ‘truly staggering’ adding it is ‘nothing short of a scandal’.
Among the dead are Elena Walsh, 64, who contracted a stomach bug last August, days after arriving for her £5,000 Tui package holiday at Riu Cabo Verde on the island of Sal.
And there is Mark Ashley, 55, a self-employed forklift driver, who also fell sick two days into his holiday at the Riu Palace Santa Maria with his wife, Emma. He managed to return to the UK last October but became breathless and started vomiting again. Mark died at Luton & Dunstable Hospital last November.
An unnamed lawyer, 54, from Chester developed diarrhoea and nausea ten days into his stay at the Riu Karamboa on the island of Boa Vista, and died at a local hospital, also last November.
He had been diagnosed with heart failure, ‘cardiogenic shock’ and gastroenteritis.
Karen Pooley, 64, from Gloucestershire became sick at the Riu Funana resort on the island of Sal last October – after four days in a local hospital she was flown to Tenerife for further treatment, but died the next day.
Elena Walsh, pictured with her husband and son, contracted a stomach bug in Cape Verde last August and died just days after arriving for her package holiday
Karen Pooley from Gloucestershire became sick at a resort on the island. After four days in a local hospital she was flown to Tenerife for treatment, but died the next day
In November 2024, an unnamed man in his 60s from Watford died after suffering gastric illness. But Jane was the first of the tourists to lose her life – and now her daughters want to know why the apparent failures of hygiene and sanitation on Cape Verde weren’t dealt with then. ‘Too many people have died,’ says Porcia, 33. ‘No one should have to go through what we’re going through.’
Lucy adds: ‘It’s horrible it’s still happening when it could have been stopped three years ago.’
Indeed, despite all this, Tui – which denies liability – is still selling package deals to Riu resorts, including Hotel Riu Palace Santa Maria, where Jane fell ill.
‘They should not be advertising this holiday at all,’ says Porcia.
The exact source of the infections isn’t clear but inadequate water treatment systems are being blamed. Last December, the Foreign Office warned tourists travelling to Cape Verde about the risk of shigella.
Last month two of the four main treatment plants on the largest island, Santiago, reportedly broke down, limiting the supply of clean water and compounding the problem. For Lucy and Porcia, hindsight comes far too late. Both from Lincoln, they break down as they talk about their mum, who lived half an hour away in Gainsborough. ‘We spoke every day,’ says Porcia, a site liaison coordinator, whose son Parker – by partner Danny, 35, a plumber – is now two years old.
In fact she had her doubts about her mum’s holiday, having seen people reporting illnesses on social media while staying at the same hotel in Autumn 2022.
‘I sent her those TikToks. I said: “Don’t go. People are saying they got really ill.” She said, “it’s fine.” She was stubborn.’ The week before Jane flew out, the three women met at Porcia’s house. Jane bought a lasagna to help ensure Porcia, who was seven months pregnant, ate well while she was away. She’d already sourced enough supplies for her unborn grandson to last him until his first birthday, ‘clothes, nappies, cot, pushchair – you name it, she’d bought it,’ smiles Porcia. ‘She was so excited.’
Porcia sent her mother Jane TikTok videos which warned about becoming ill at resorts in Cape Verde (like Riu Palace Santa Maria, pictured, where Mark Ashley, another Briton, fell sick)
Jane kept in touch with her daughters throughout her holiday. ‘She’d send photos of her drinks and the pool and tell us about her day.’
But when Jane and Lucy FaceTimed a few days into the holiday, it was clear she was in her room, not by the pool. At the time she said it was ‘too hot’ and did not mention the fact she had fallen ill with gastric and flu-like symptoms, including vomiting and diarrhoea. Jane was picky about what food she ate on holidays abroad, says Porcia, ‘so it was strange she got ill’. ‘I still don’t know if she got it from the swimming pool or ice cubes.’ In any case, Lucy adds, ‘she would have brushed it off’.
‘She wasn’t a drama queen. She said they were having a good time despite the heat.’ Instead, Jane asked Lucy about a recent job interview, told her she was proud of her, and fussed over Porcia. ‘It was my first baby so she was ever so worried about me,’ Porcia says.
Only when Jane visited Porcia two days after her return, on December 14, did she admit she’d been ill.
‘She told me she’d been bed- bound for days, which was a bit of a shock,’ recalls Porcia. Her mother, she noticed, had lost weight and seemed lethargic. ‘She looked under the weather and sat on the sofa – normally she’d be cleaning my house.’
Like other holidaymakers who died after travelling to Cape Verde, Jane had a pre-existing health condition, in her case chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). Nevertheless, she lived a normal life, and indeed had survived three bouts of Covid and a breast cancer diagnosis at the age of 46.
‘COPD didn’t stop her doing anything she wanted to do,’ says Lucy. ‘She was a fighter.’
On December 19, however, Jane called Lucy to cancel plans to have the two youngest grandchildren for a sleepover. ‘She said she couldn’t keep anything down, couldn’t eat.’ Jane also asked her if she could take over the festive food shop for Christmas Day lunch. ‘She loved Christmas. It wasn’t like her at all.’
Quickly Jane became bedbound again. Her daughters implored her to see a doctor, but – still thinking of everyone else – she didn’t want them to visit because ‘she didn’t want us to get the bug’.
On the evening of December 22, Jane was struggling to breathe. She called her doctor, who sent an ambulance, yet a paramedic said Jane’s oxygen levels were normal and there was no need for her to be hospitalised.
After that ‘she just got worse,’ says Lucy. On Christmas Eve, Jane dialled 999, and was rushed to Lincoln Hospital, where she stayed until her death.
At this point, Porcia says, she ‘had completely lost her mind’. Jane ‘looked grey, cold, like someone completely different’.
On Christmas Eve, Jane dialled 999 and was rushed to hospital to be put on an antibiotic drip. Her daughter says she looked ‘grey, cold’ and ‘like someone completely different’
‘She thought there were cats in the room. She didn’t recognise me. I said, “It’s me, Mum.” It was tormenting, horrible.’
Doctors told the family they suspected Jane had picked up an infection in Cape Verde, but all they could do was put her on an antibiotic drip on the assumption it was a bacterial infection.
On Boxing Day, Michael, 64, who’d been married to Jane for five years, warned Porcia and Lucy that their mother’s condition was deteriorating.
Jane was placed on the respiratory Ward, but now began ‘lashing out’ and refusing her medication, says Lucy, who sat by her bed all day, and some nights. ‘She wasn’t my mum. I tried to show her pictures of the kids, but she didn’t remember them. Some days she wouldn’t know it was me.’
Doctors were still unsure exactly what was wrong with her. Blood tests gave no clues, and still she went downhill.
On January 3, Jane suddenly sat up in bed. ‘She looked at me, and squeezed me,’ says Lucy. ‘We’d always said “love you” to Mum and she would say, “love you more”.’ That day, Jane said it one last time. ‘But she said it like a child.’ The following day, Porcia sat by her mother’s side to say goodbye. ‘I told her the baby and I were going to be okay.
‘I thanked her for everything and said I loved her.’
Jane died at 3.30am on January 5, with Lucy, her husband Jonny and Jane’s sister by her side.
Porcia arrived one minute too late. ‘It all happened so fast,’ she recalls, in tears.
Lucy broke the news to her children children Tyler, 19, Bella, 12 and George, 11, that afternoon.
Jane’s grandchildren and her two daughters, Lucy (left) and Porcia, rushed to be by her side in hospital before her death. But tragically Porcia was one minute too late
‘I explained Nanny had passed away and she’d be in the sky and we should look for her. I didn’t sleep for two weeks.’
Porcia, meanwhile, became so stressed her baby stopped growing and had to be delivered by emergency C-section on February 14. Jane was going to be her birthing partner.
After Parker was born, Porcia developed postnatal depression, desperate for her mum, whose face she saw in her newborn son. ‘Parker looks just like me and I’m the spitting image of my mother.’
The cause of death on Jane’s death certificate is ‘infective exacerbation of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease’. Lucy thinks the likelihood is that it was either salmonella or shigella that was exacerbating her infection. It is a source of huge regret to the sisters that Jane was cremated with no autopsy or postmortem.
Meanwhile, Porcia mentioned the spate of illness suffered by other holidaymakers in Cape Verde to Michael, and by the summer of 2023 Irwin Mitchell had added the case to their list.
Porcia was so stressed after her mother’s passing that her baby stopped growing and had to be delivered by emergency C-section
The deaths last year of Cape Verde holidaymakers have ‘reopened the wounds we’re trying to heal from,’ says Lucy. ‘Nothing seems to have been done since mum passed. We feel terrible that other families are having to go through what we went through three years on, when it could have been stopped.
‘We don’t want other people to have the pain we’re suffering.’
Her mental health has deteriorated since her mother died.
‘I see psychiatrists,’ says Lucy, who is retraining to be a mental health nurse. ‘I have a lot of guilt I didn’t fight for her more.’
She has some of her mother’s ashes on a neck chain and says her daughter still sends texts to her grandmother ‘telling her she misses her’.
There’s a picture of Jane in her living room, a vase of her mother’s favourite yellow roses alongside.
It’s clear that she was a vibrant woman with everything to live for, and her death is made all the more senseless because lessons don’t seem to have been learned.
A spokesperson for RIU Hotels & Resorts said they ‘deeply regret these losses and offer our most sincere condolences to the affected families’.
‘At RIU the health and safety of our guests is always our main priority. We operate with the highest standards of professionalism and service, placing hygienic-sanitary safety as our top priority.
Lucy, who says her mental health has suffered since Jane’s death, keeps some of her ashes in a neck chain
‘Our hotels in Cape Verde follow the strictest international health and hygiene standards, certified by external prestigious consultancy firms, specialising in health and safety. We reiterate that the health and well-being of our customers come first.’
In a statement the Cape Verde Ministry of Health said the country was ‘internationally recognised for its stability, safety, and steady progress in key public health indicators.’
It added: ‘From an epidemiological standpoint, official data from the competent authorities of the United Kingdom indicate that gastrointestinal infectious diseases, including those associated with Shigella, are not among the leading causes of mortality.
‘Such events are rare and generally present low lethality, with severe outcomes occurring mainly among individuals with underlying clinical vulnerabilities.
‘British surveillance reports do not identify Cabo Verde as a significant source of imported cases.’
Tui didn’t respond to the Daily Mail’s request for comment, but has previously said it is fully investigating the claims and ensures customers who fall ill on holiday have access to appropriate care.
For Jane’s daughters, this isn’t enough. ‘People are dying,’ says Lucy. ‘Something needs to change.’
