A British tourist is fighting for his life at a hospital after contracting a rare illness during a visit to a major holiday destination.  Gavin Arulnayagam, 24, had been traveling across Asia for the past 18 months when he suddenly developed Guillain-Barré syndrome – a rapid-onset autoimmune disorder that ravages the nervous system and weakens muscles – while in the Philippines.

Mr Arulnayagam has been put on ventilator support since October, with medical bills of “around £3,000 a day”. His friend, Salvador Sanchez, who lived with Gavin in Thailand earlier this year, travelled to the Philippines to visit him on November 6 and was left shocked by what he saw.

His friend explained that Gavin required a tracheostomy to breathe. After meeting his friend, Mr Sanchez said that he was nothing like the outgoing, energetic man he knew.

Mr Sanchez, 21, told The Mirror: “Seeing him in that bed, it was horrible. He was awake, and he recognised me, but he was not in a great position. He couldn’t really move at all, and couldn’t speak because he had a tube in his neck”.

Hailing from London, Salvador and Gavin met while travelling in Northern Thailand. They both became close friends over their common shared interest in digital entrepreneurship. 

Gavin later moved onto the Philippines and Salvador went to Bali earlier this year. However, in October this year, Mr Sanchez received a message from Gavin’s girlfriend saying that he had become “really sick”.

Gavin’s hospital care alone amounts to around £3,000 each day, while the cost of arranging a repatriation flight back to Britain is estimated to be between £200,000 and £300,000. 

Faced with these overwhelming expenses, his family and friends have set up a GoFundMe page to raise funds, explaining that the costs are simply impossible for them to bear on their own.

Salvdaor described Gavin as a “very social person” who is “always meeting new people when traveling”, adding: “I just know he would help me out as well. Which is why I’m trying to do my best to raise some money for him. He’s a very good friend.”

He said the entire ordeal has been a “big wake-up call” for him and his friends living abroad as to just how important it is to buy travel insurance, and hoped that his story would reach young people who have plans to travel, that no one is “invincible”.