By Shirley Thomas

THERE SEEMS to be more questions than answers surrounding the mysterious disappearance of a patient’s clothing, cash and other personal effects from the Accident and Emergency Unit of the Georgetown Public Hospital (GPHC), last Tuesday, as the patient was being taken to the main operating theatre for surgery.Thirty-year-old Reagan Lambert of Mahaicony, East Coast Demerara, was injured in a hit-and-run accident at Huntley, Mahaicony around 22:30hrs on Easter Monday night. The vehicle which hit him from behind caused him to suffer a broken right leg and ankle; injuries to his right lower back and rib cage; and his right arm and jaw.
The accident was moments later reported to the police who picked up the injured man and rushed him to the Mahaicony Hospital where he was stabilised, given emergency treatment and transferred by ambulance to the GPHC. The patient was admitted and kept in the holding area for the remainder of the night.
The following day (Tuesday), around 13:30hrs, he recalls, he was approached by a nurse dressed in white uniform, and whom he described in detail told him that he was being prepared for theatre and had to take off his clothes and all personal effects and leave them with her. At that time he was awake and fully conscious. He said the nurse assured him that the items would be safe and that she would return them to him after he was out of the theatre.
The items he said he handed over were: One red jersey; one pair of camoflague trousers; one Nike boots (light blue, trimmed with deep blue); an Acatel cell phone and a wallet containing his identification card and about $5,000in cash.
Lambert said that the following day (Wednesday), he asked one of his sisters who visited him, to go back to A&E and uplift the items. However, the family was shocked when staff at the unit told them that they had no clothing and personal effects for him. The woman said that all they handed over to her was a 4” x 6” photograph of Lambert and two other friends. It was enclosed in a plastic bag of similar size and the staff handing it over claimed that the photograph was found in the patient’s chart.
What the family deems as strange is that the photograph was in Lambert’s pants pocket when he arrived at the hospital and at no time did he take it out. A report was made at the Matron’s Office on Monday, (April 4) and it was learnt that the nurses taking custody of any patient’s personal belongings would first make a log book entry, then have the internal security check and make an entry into the their property book as well, so that the items could be traced and reconciled when needed.
On Monday afternoon another of the man’s sisters again visited the A&E, and made her concerns known to the Internal Security and a female staff in the triage area. The officers were appalled to find that there was no entry for the patient Reagan Lambert in their Property book, neither was there any in the nurses’ log book.
Out of concern, the security at the triage room took a decision to report the matter to the base office in the hospital compound. The officer in charge immediately caused a search to be mounted. And what did that search yield? One side of the patient’s Nike boots in a toilet in the Emergency room. How did the boots get there? “Your guess is as good as mine,” the patient’s disappointed sister muttered.
The woman was so distraught she could not even take the one side boot, but walked away from the scene.
Meanwhile, the patient was expected to be transferred to the Mahaicony Hospital on Tuesday, but would now have to leave without the items he had with him when he arrived.
The family is asking the administration of the A&E Unit, now that they have a detailed description of the woman who collected the items from the patient, to check their register to determine just who, suiting that description, might have been on duty around 13:30hrs on the afternoon of Tuesday, March 22.
Considering this to be an indictment on the good name of the institution, the family is suggesting that the authorities deal condignly with whoever might be found responsible for the disappearance of the patient’s items.