MOTORISTS had to swerve to avoid an elderly hospital patient who was wandering alone on a busy dual carriage-way late at night.
Several concerned drivers pulled over to help the man who appeared to have left a nearby hospital, after noticing he was dressed in just a gown and had at least one tube attached to him and was walking with a frame.
The incident occurred at 11.30pm on Sunday, on the southbound carriageway of Watford Road, adjacent to one of the exit roads of Northwick Park Hospital.
Witness Arti Lukha, of Torver Road, Harrow, said: "I had just finished work and was in the back of a taxi.
"He was quite close to a little traffic island and was walking along in the middle of the road. He was very pale and had white hair and to be honest, I thought he was a bollard."
Ms Lukha, a news editor at ITN, asked her cab driver to pull over as cars both in front and behind also stopped to block the road, call the emergency services and check the pensioner's condition.
Ms Lukha said: "I didn't speak to him but he was very old. He was wearing a hospital gown and I think he had a tube coming out of him, like an oxygen tube.
"It was clear where he had come from. It makes me think, how did he get out of the hospital? All the wards are above
the first floor and there's a long slope from the entrance to the road."
An ambulance returned the patient to the hospital within seven minutes after arriving on the scene at 11.40pm.
A spokesman for North West London Hospitals NHS Trust, which runs the hospital, said: "The trust can confirm that a patient was reported missing on Sunday night. He was found by security on Watford Road.
"Security alerted the police and called for an ambulance. The patient was safely returned to the hospital."
He confirmed the elderly man left the building unannounced, rather than discharging himself or being discharged by the hospital.
