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Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves. (IWN file photo)
Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves. (IWN file photo)
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Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves on Wednesday sought to assure Vincentians that he is in good health, having returned to work after doctors ordered him to rest for a week because of an ankle injury.

“From the standpoint of my health, I am fine. It is just that I had this unfortunate accident with my foot, my ankle, and I am OK,” the 67-year-old leader told a press conference.

“Knock wood that I would be around for a little while yet. There are many unfinished tasks…” he said, as he rattled his knuckles against the table in the Cabinet Room.

On Thursday, Communication Consultant in the Office of the Prime Minister Elson Crick said doctors had advised Gonsalves to rest his ankle, and as a result of this, the Prime Minister had been working out of his official residence since Tuesday.

When asked on Wednesday to give details about the injury, Gonsalves said he had slipped in his bathroom.

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“First off all, let me just preface this by saying I am a human being and prone to accidents, like everybody else.

“I don’t know how many of you have come out of bathrooms, showers, where there is water on the floor and the tile isn’t as good as it should be and you kind of slip; you twist your ankle.

“And it was my unfortunate joinder of facts and circumstances, where I had a small cut at my foot bottom. I walk about the house barefooted like any countryman. There would have been also with the twist, a little hole in the foot, so they were conjoined. The foot got swollen, the ankle part,” Gonsalves.

He said he had taken antibiotics and anti-inflammatory mediation to threat the injuries.

“If I wasn’t Prime Minister, nobody would be concerned about if Ralph twist he ankle,” he further said.

Gonsalves also responded to persons whom he said don’t particularly like him, and always wish for the worst whenever he has “any slight incapacitation”.

“I hope and pray to Almighty God that the worst don’t happen to them,” he said, adding that when the physician checked his blood pressure it had a reading of 119 over 77.

“It doesn’t mean that it can’t go up a little bit more than that from time to time. My blood sugar level is fine. But, at the same time, I am a human being. I am going to be 68 years old in August,” Gonsalves said.

“I thank God for the years he has given me thus far and for the condition in which he has me. And if the bones creak from time to time, and particularly that same foot on which I had done my surgery in 2007, that’s it.”

Gonsalves has been Prime Minister of St. Vincent and the Grenadines since March 2001 and has indicated his intention to lead the Unity Labour Party into the next general elections, constitutionally due by the end of next year, when the party will seek a fourth consecutive term in office.

4 replies on “After week of rest, Gonsalves gives assurance about his health”

  1. Hahaaha. Sometimes I just have to laugh, is this some kind of Joke?? It has to be, no one in their right mind would take that story seriously. An ankle? really? While I agree that a sprain ankle is not good, it is not as big a deal as this. You have 6 body gaurds anyone of them could help you in the car and get you in the office. Sit in a wheel chair and have them push you around if you prefer , this is just nonsense. This is the same prime minister who went to Europe with sprain ankle for royal wedding, but he had to miss reparation debate for an ankle??

    Which one you think is more important, a wedding or reparation debate? Lol sometimes I have to laugh at all this nonsense. Dr Ralph Know who he could fool.

  2. I can’t remember which year but Gonsalves wanted the tiles at PM’s residence changed because he fell on them.. November 2008 fall down, March 2011 fall down, April 2014 fall down. Is Gonsalves the most accident prone/hospitalized PM in the world or just a shaky old man?. Efforts by Doug Howard to forward some info may have persons hiding from their own records. Since The Vincentian paper republished a 1978 ‘death threat’ letter we are no longer hearing Gonsalves talking of threats to him, then again i might be writing too quick.

  3. peterbinose says:

    He would of been better off telling the truth “Head Hurts, My Feet Stink, And I Don’t Love Jesus”

  4. peterbinose says:

    Ks784, it was about the same time when he went to parliament and said he needed special fund to repair the official house roof because it was leaking. When questioned about a roof of an almost new building was leaking, how should that be.

    What he never told them it was because there had been a serious fire in one of the bedrooms that almost burnt the house down and it was put out with some damage to the roof. When the truth was discovered he gave no explanation, no reason why the bedroom had a fire, nothing.

    So what do you make of that?

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