Nurse Pryce paid the ultimate price

IN RETROSPECT, ALBERT PRYCE MAINTAINED HIS WIFE PAID THE
ULTIMATE PRICE for what turned out to be a calamitous error on his part.
His fatal mistake was insisting that Marie Thomas-Pryce, 37, his wife, be hospitalised in the
government’s Infectious Diseases Unit for her COVID-19 infection.
The irony is that Thomas-Pryce was a Nursing Assistant for more than a decade in the public
health sector, but staunchly resisted being another patient of that public sector institution. The
Infectious Diseases Hospital, known by the soubriquet ‘COVID Hospital’ among ordinary
Guyanese, is rapidly becoming entangled in high-profile negative notoriety.
Complaints of starvation by patients and crassitude by the nursing staff (especially a particular
‘Sister’, who will remain anonymous for now) have rapidly become commonplace.
And without any known public sanctions.
When Mr. Nigel Dharamlall, Minister of Local Government and Regional Development, got
wind of one such outrageously bad complaint by a former male patient, now deceased, and he
intervened, some nurses allegedly vowed to make the patient’s stay there as unbearable as is
humanly possible.
Mrs. Thomas-Pryce would have heard of many more anecdotes like those linked to that
healthcare institution. Maybe it was those harrowing experiences that pushed her to urge her
husband for them to pursue self-medication.
Now Mr. Pryce must live with long-lasting regrets.
In an exclusive with www.aroundtheregions.com, the grieving husband and taxi driver was very
blunt: “They (the hospital) could have done more…to save her life. I really don’t think that
enough was done for my wife considering that she was a nurse (Nursing Assistant) who worked

for years taking care of people. The system over at Liliendaal there is one that will stress anyone
out, and needs immediate fixing.”
His wife’s 12-day stay at the government’s healthcare institution was an eye-opener for the
father of three and widower. He is outraged by the treatment meted out to patients and their
visiting families, and wants an immediate probe, leading ultimately, to reforms.
Pryce blasted services at the infectious Diseases Unit as “lousy” and predicted increasing
fatalities linked directly to the despicable conduct of some of the nurses there. He claims to have
first-hand knowledge of patients who beat COVID through the use of locally-concocted
therapeutics and the effective balm of love and care from family members.
“You have people contracting COVID and opting to stay at home because they secure better care
from their family and with their local remedy they would get well. I know of someone who had
COVID so bad that he was unable to walk properly and had to be assisted. A day like today he is
up and about.”
“What hurts is that my wife was in a hospital where she was expected to get the best of
treatment. The system is so lousy. My wife texted me every day asking for me. It hurts to know
that I couldn’t reach out to my wife to go and comfort her, to assist her. You couldn’t see her,
you couldn’t take anything to her,” Pryce lamented.
He lashed out at the daily diet too.

“They giving she fried chicken, cook-up, burger and fries. How can you have sick people and
giving them those things to eat? It is unacceptable. Those who know me and my wife will get an
idea of the enormous loss that I suffered.”
My wife called me a few times telling me that she was hungry. When I enquired, she said that
she has to wait until dinner time before she can get anything to eat. How can you have sick
people in a hospital who are hungry, but are forced to wait until dinner time to get something
again to eat? He queried rhetorically.

“While you have given them lunch, they should be something in place to assist those patients
that may need something to eat between lunch and dinner. Shortly after speaking to my wife
someone (from the hospital) called…and I told the caller that my wife was hungry. He said that
he will look into it to see what can be done,” the outraged husband related.
“I regret the day I took my wife to that hospital.”
“If I had kept my wife at home, she wouldn’t have died. When they (hospital authorities)
called it’s like they can’t give you any good news. It was as though they were putting you at
a top of a building and then pushing you off,” said the now-lonely widower, father and taxi
operator.