A heath service van carrying sensitive information about patients has been stolen.

It happened on Monday lunchtime at a GP surgery in Cheriton Road, Folkestone.

Vans run between William Harvey Hospital in Ashford and local surgeries twice daily transporting patient samples and letters between consultants and doctors.

It is understood the driver of the vehicle walked into the surgery and when he returned to unload the van it was gone.

Despite the potentially sensitive nature of what is on the vehicle, staff at the East Kent Hospitals NHS Trust want to assure patients not to worry.

Clinical director of pathology for the trust Dr Ruth Lapworth said: “The information is not really useful to anyone else but it could be sensitive.

“The van carries a lot of post from the hospital to the surgery.

"This includes letters and information about patients and samples from patients to be analysed when they are at hospital.

“The samples on the van will now be unsuitable for analysis and those patients will have to repeat their samples.

“We do not know exactly what was on the van.

“There could well be some sensitive information in there in terms of correspondence between consultants at the hospital and GPs.

“We are assuming whoever stole it did not know what was in the van.”

Dr Lapworth said she is amazed the distinctive van has not been found yet.

She said: “The van is white and fairly ordinary but it does have the Kent hospitals logo on the front, back and on the side in blue print. We were hoping it would be recovered by now.

“If someone sees it they must contact Kent Police so it can be recovered.”