Blood and guts

According to insurance industry statistics, more than 20m UK residents took out travel policies last year and 450,000 of us made claims against them. The bulk of claims - totalling £68m - were for medical cover. I had always resented the extra 30-odd quid on the holiday bill, which never seemed to mean very much, until I finished up in a hospital in Corfu.

It was late last summer when I arrived, in need of a quiet time on the way back from an assignment in the Balkans. By the morning of 18 September, I was on the way to the Corfu General Clinic with acute abdominal pains. I was about to become one of 2,400 British medical emergencies which, according to official Greek hospital statistics, are treated in Corfu every year.

The general clinic is the only private hospital on the island and is where regular visitor Camilla Parker Bowles would be 'whisked' if she fell off her moped. Its location is central and convenient for the airport. The end of the runway is 500m or so away and the clinic is directly under the flight path. When the aircraft take off during the summer nights, they clear the roof by little more than 200ft, so low that the alarms of the cars parked in the square respond together, adding their whooping chorus to the tearing scream of the massive turbines.

After several hours waiting in the villa for a doctor, followed by a long, dangerous drive through a rainstorm, I was carried, white and sweating, into the clinic at 9am. Here I was confronted by a scene of almost martial carnage. The small space was crowded with youths of both sexes, mostly English, as far as I could tell; all freshly mutilated and all smoking. Their faces and limbs were Ordnance Surveys of swelling, haematoma and suture; blood was splattered on the marble floor and the walls. I saw one bony youth with heavy dressings taped over a tracery of stitching across the Celtic tattoo on his left pectoral muscle. Women were sobbing, children screaming. The staff behind the reception desk appeared overwhelmed by what was going on around them. A man in an open-necked shirt directed me with a peremptory wave over to a bench, where I collapsed.

I was, however, luckier than most, because the woman I was with was known at the clinic and, once my insurance had been checked, I was taken to the emergency rooms on the first floor. Here the scene was much the same. The wards were full. Some were accommodating two to a bed. On the landing outside, a rabble of British youth was standing or leaning against the walls; most were holding plastic bottles of saline solution above their heads with one hand and smoking with the other. Some were gulping Heineken bought from the bar in the basement of the hospital.

A girl, naked except for a transparent plastic surgical gown, which she was clutching behind her, was wandering aimlessly about the landing. Her hair, which appeared simply to be wet, was actually sodden with blood, and blood was streaked down her cheeks. It was dripping down her legs, on to her bare feet and on to the floor. No one seemed to be over 20 years old. Most wore beach clothes, in spite of the early hour. One youth was shouting into his mobile: 'Get me Mum, get me Mum!'

Startled at what I was seeing, and starting to feel nervous, I asked a passing nurse what was going on. Who were all these people? 'Is raining,' she said briefly, 'the British fall off their scooters.' Later a doctor explained to me that the night's rainfall had been the first since Easter and that the roads, slick with a summer of crushed olives and months of diesel deposits, had become lethal. 'Most of these casualties come from Cavos on the south of the island. Cavos is the Magaluf of Corfu. 'They're kids on cheap breaks, they drink all day and crash their scooters. They think it's cool not to wear helmets, so we get a lot of head injuries. The law says you must wear a crash helmet, but even the police don't bother. What can you do? They're idiots, and we have to ignore sick people while we deal with them.'

I was allocated to a ward with five beds. I say beds, but they were actually little more than couches or large stretchers. The mattresses were rigid, narrow and uncomfortable. Someone had only recently vacated mine and the rumpled sheet was stained with a fine spray of blood. Two of the beds were occupied by couples. Next to me, a boy called Ross - I know his name because it was tattooed across the knuckles of the fist nearest to me - was lying in the arms of his girl, Melanie. Obviously once a pretty teenage girl, she was pretty no longer. Her right cheekbone had been fractured and her right ear almost severed. They had crashed into a wall on a hired Suzuki 250cc Virago. Neither had been wearing helmets.

Ross told me that he came from Lewisham. He had been given a crash helmet but was wearing it on his arm at the time, presumably because it looked cool. 'Wot you in for then?' he asked. Tricky question, so I replied, 'Guts' and left it at that. Indignant, he asked, 'Wot, dodgy prawn?' As he spoke, the staff brought plates of food. Ross, who I noticed had been showing more than normal interest in his sleeping companion, pulled his left hand from inside her jumper and immediately started to feed. 'Prison food,' he remarked after finishing a plate of pasta and beans. 'You should know,' retorted a woman who I had noticed sitting across the ward and who had remained silent until now. She turned out to be Melanie's 'Nan' and had come to keep an eye on her granddaughter. Ross ignored her, stood up, farted contemptuously and walked gingerly outside for a fag. 'Anyone going back to Cavos?' he shouted in the corridor. Opposite me in the ward, a middle-aged couple from Birmingham was sharing a bed in the corner by the window and appeared to be under the effects of a general anaesthetic. I pressed the buzzer for help.

An hour later, I had been attached to a saline drip and taken upstairs to my own room where, under the directions of Dr Chrissipopoulos, they removed large quantities of my blood and started the tests to find out what was wrong with me. The comparative serenity of the top floor was interrupted throughout the night and day by the airbuses and 757s howling low overhead, but on my first night in the Corfu clinic there were other problems conspiring to keep me awake. An Englishman had crashed his Suzuki four-wheel drive on the notorious road to Kassiopi on the north-east of the island and had fractured his upper femur just below the groin. He had not been wearing a seat belt. I became aware of his problems when I heard screaming from his room in the early hours. It was a bloodcurdling sound and when I asked one of the nurses what had happened, she shrugged and said, 'We have to move him and it is painful.' 'Don't you use painkillers?' I asked. She smiled, shrugged again and started to take my temperature. Perhaps she didn't understand what I was saying?

After I had been in the clinic for three sleepless days and nights, I still had no idea what was wrong with me. It is not yet part of Greek medical practice to inform the patient about his treatment or condition. Dr Chrissipopoulos would arrive, look at my chart, say 'You like a drink, hah sonny,' pat me on the head and depart. I had to confront him in order to find out that he believed I had been suffering from acute pancreatitis. He released this information grudgingly as he was edging out of the room. Although the approach of the general clinic staff was more aloof and perhaps a touch more cold-blooded than it would have been in the UK, the standard of medical care was good and the diagnosis and treatment were faultless.

The public hospital, which is where I would have finished up had I not had travel insurance, bears no relationship to any of our NHS equivalents. Nursing has to be done by the family of the patient and what little food there is, is unappetising. A friend who spent the night there after breaking his leg told me: 'People come here on holiday and stay in hotels and everything is civilised and modern, but when they find themselves at the mercy of the Greek state medical system, they soon realise that they have descended into the Third World. This is not like the UK; you have to make sure you are covered for private medical care when you come here.'

Like in all the other hospitals on the island, the staff have become hardened to the casual stupidity of the British kids who get drunk and fall off their bikes or crash their cars. As I left, restored to fragile health after five days of starvation and industrial quantities of antibiotics, I talked to a young doctor as he sat smoking in the car park. 'They drive without helmets because they think it looks good,' he said. 'They are often drugged or drunk when they are brought in. We have to treat them. What else can we do?' Well, I suppose the Greek police could enforce the law. But I'm not holding my breath.

• The Observer

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