Twenty-year old Presidential
Guard, Clarence Gomes was added to the
country’s road fatality list after he crashed
his motorcycle on the Nabaclis Public Road early
yesterday morning.
Gomes, of 37 Lancaster
Village, Mahaica, East Coast Demerara was
heading home from work when he lost control of
the motorcycle and crashed while trying to
negotiate a bend in the road.
He succumbed at the
Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation.
Dead:
Clarence Gomes
But family members allege
that had it not been for the uncaring attitude
of hospital attendants, the young guard’s life
could have been saved.
Speaking to Kaieteur News
yesterday, Gomes’ father, Colin, said that he
was at work when his wife relayed to him that
the young guard was involved in an accident.
He said that he headed for
the Georgetown Hospital where Gomes was being
treated.
There he had what he claimed
was firsthand experience of the callous attitude
of staff at the medical institution.
“When I go there he was
groaning in pain and they were examining he fuh
see if he had any broken bones. He didn’t have
no broken bones but they find some internal
injury and they tell me he gat to go fuh
surgery,” Colin Gomes explained.
He said that the doctors
prepared his son for surgery and waited for the
porters to take him to the Operating Theatre.
“These porters at the
hospital, they took a very long time to remove
the boy. Over a hour doctors had him ready for
surgery. The porters them coming in and going
out. They watch the boy and they gone out. One
ah dem holler how he ain’t wukkin. They gone
and look for another porter and dey deh skinning
dey teeth,” Colin Gomes told this newspaper.
The
motorcycle Gomes was riding when he crashed.
He said that after a while
his son’s groaning stopped and Gomes assumed
that he had fallen into unconsciousness, but he
was wrong.
Eventually, the Presidential
Guard was taken to the operating theatre but by
that time there was nothing that doctors could
do to save his life.
“As soon as we reach up (to
the Operating Theatre) the doctor come out and
seh that he didn’t make it, the guy died on
his way to the theatre,” a distraught Gomes
related.
He is convinced that had his
son been taken to the Operating Theatre in a
timely manner his life could have been saved.
Gomes said that from all
indications there was no other vehicle involved
in his son’s accident.
Shaleeza Khan, the dead
man’s aunt is also disturbed at the treatment
meted out to him at the hospital.
“Now the doctors were
prepared, prepared and waiting with this child
on the stretcher to go to the theatre but there
was no porter. When they do get de porter now,
oxygen ain’t ready. When the doctor asked the
nurses about the oxygen, they behaving in a
lackadaisical manner, but they didn’t know
that I was a relative standing there,” Khan
told this newspaper.
She said that she overheard
one obviously frustrated doctor telling another
that the situation was the norm at the
Georgetown Hospital.
“At least we would have
been satisfied to know that the child died
during surgery. It is upsetting. When people
speak out, they say you wrong and you
shouldn’t speak. You must go to the
authorities. But who feels it knows it. I am
very hurt because I still feel that if he had
reached to the theatre on time they would have
saved his life. Even if he de live for two days
or so we would have been satisfied,” Khan
said.
A post mortem examination will be performed
on Gomes’ body to determine the cause of his
death.
Monday,
April 05, 2010