A Nigerian woman has been provided with healthcare worth tens of thousands of pounds on the NHS after flying into Britain when she was pregnant with quintuplets.
Bimbo Ayelabola, 33, flew here without her husband last December to be with her three sisters during the pregnancy. She was given a six-month visitor’s visa.
She gave birth by caesarean section on April 28 at Homerton hospital in Hackney, east London. Consultants, midwives, operating staff, social workers and health visitors were involved in the medical care and follow-up support.
Ayelabola gave birth to two boys, Tayseel and Samir, and three girls, Aqeelah, Binish and Zara. She is now applying for an extension to her visa because she considers her children too frail to travel. The children’s father, Ohi, 37, is still in Nigeria.
The five babies were each treated in a special-care unit at a cost of about £1,000 a day because they were born prematurely at 32 weeks. This would cost £35,000 for a week’s care and she will not be able to pay.
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Ayelabola admits she knew she was pregnant when she arrived in Britain — although she says she did not know she would have quintuplets — but the case will raise new questions about health tourists receiving free care on the NHS. Some are billed for their care, but many refuse to pay the bills or cannot afford to do so.
UK Border Agency officials frequently report seeing passengers arriving in an advanced state of pregnancy after securing a visitor’s visa. About 150 cases a year have been identified at Gatwick airport, including some who have used the NHS for previous births and have not paid their bills.
There are strict rules to ensure foreign nationals who use the NHS are able to pay and are billed promptly for the treatment. Many hospitals have overseas visitors managers, identifying the foreign nationals who are entitled to free care and those who need to be billed.
Maternity care is provided immediately irrespective of the patient’s ability to pay, to protect the unborn child.
Ayelabola took the fertility drug Clomid last year at her home in Lagos. She discovered she was pregnant in November and then applied for a visa to visit her sisters in London.
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In an interview with The Sun this weekend, she 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.
“Now if I go back I’ll be on my own without even a roof over my head. My entire family support network, three sisters, four aunts and virtually all my schoolfriends live here.” Her husband visited Britain but has since returned to Nigeria.
Ayelabola is living in a two-bedroom flat in east London with her sister Stella, 26. She says she is struggling to pay the bills, facing £70-a-week costs just for milk powder and nappies.
Ayelabola’s quintuplets do not have an automatic right of residence despite being born here. She is seeking a six-month extension to her visitor’s visa.
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Her visa states that she is not allowed to work in this country or claim benefits. Should she be given permanent residence in Britain, the total bill for NHS care and financial support for her family would be likely to run into hundreds of thousands of pounds.
The Home Office said: “The NHS is a national health service, not an international one. We expect those with no right to be in the UK to leave, otherwise we will remove them.”
In March, the government announced new rules whereby any overseas visitor owing more than £1,000 to the NHS will not be allowed into the country until the debt is paid off. It also wants more robust procedures for charging foreign nationals who use the NHS.
Ministers will also consider whether health insurance should be incorporated into visa applications.
Britons’ poor work ethic forces bosses to recruit foreigners
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The jobless crisis is fuelled by the lack of a work ethic among unemployed Britons rather than a shortage of qualifications or skills, says a new report, writes Simon McGee.
This poor attitude has pushed employers into giving most of the 2.2m jobs created over the past 30 years to more motivated, punctual foreign workers.
The Centre for Social Justice think tank — founded by the work and pensions secretary, Iain Duncan Smith, who suggested last week that employers should give preference to British workers — found that businesses valued hard work, appearance and timekeeping more than literacy and numeracy.
A survey of employers trying to fill entry-level jobs in hospitality, retail and manufacturing found that 82% rated work ethic and attitude as important compared with 38% who deemed literacy and numeracy important.
Asked why they turned down applicants for unskilled jobs, which make up about a third of the UK workforce, 62% of the employers said “poor work attitude and ethic”. Only 29% cited a lack of qualifications.
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The think tank said steps to tackle unemployment had been overshadowed by the “fundamental problem” of poor attitudes to work. It urged the government to add a fourth “R”, responsibility, to the traditional trio of reading, writing and arithmetic. Teenagers should be taught in school how to conduct themselves in the workplace so they were “work ready”.
The report concludes: “Timekeeping, self-awareness, confidence, presentation, communication, teamwork and an ability to understand workplace relationships are too often below the standard required, particularly in younger job seekers.”
Lord Freud, the minister for welfare reform, will launch the report, Creating Opportunity, Rewarding Ambition, on Tuesday.