The veteran BBC foreign correspondent John Simpson has told how he nearly died earlier this month from a severe allergic reaction that caused kidney problems.
The 72-year-old was rushed to Oxford’s John Radcliffe hospital on 8 September after experiencing what he described as a “rare and deadly allergic reaction”.
Simpson had complained of feeling ill and a doctor who came to his house diagnosed him as having food poisoning and dehydration and sent him to hospital, where his condition rapidly declined.
Doctors found he had suffered an allergic reaction to medication, which caused kidney problems, the Mail on Sunday reported.
“It was like a perfect storm. There was a whole chain of events that meant there was an overreaction on the kidney side which made him seriously ill,” his wife, Dee Kruger, told the Mail.
Thank heavens for Stuart Mckechnie & the ICU team at the Radcliffe. I'd not have survived, due to a rare & deadly allergic reaction.
— John Simpson (@JohnSimpsonNews) September 12, 2016
Simpson, who has reported from war zones around the world for more than four decades, described the episode as “terrifying” and thanked the staff in the ICU “who saved my life”.
“Back from the brink, thanks to @OUHospitals,” he tweeted.
He has covered the Tiananmen Square massacre, the start of the Gulf war and the conflict in Kosovo.
In 2003, he was injured in Iraq when a bomb from a US warplane exploded near the convoy in which he was travelling. His translator was killed and Simpson suffered a ruptured eardrum and shrapnel wounds.
