Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves has defended the health care system in St. Vincent and the Grenadines as Jamaican dancehall artiste Vybz Kartel seeks medical attention in the country for Graves’ disease, three years after Gonsalves flew to Barbados for healthcare after being struck in the head during a protest.
“I am told …, I get a buss head, I go Barbados. Well, because it turned out that there was no damage to the brain, but I wouldn’t have known that before I went to Barbados to see someone who was actually my friend,” Gonsalves said, adding that it would not have mattered whether he was prime minister.
“And just to put the record straight, I’ve been and stayed at Milton Cato Memorial Hospital if I have had any illness to hospitalise me, my three children with Eloise, were born at the Milton Cato Memorial Hospital,” the prime minister said, referring to his wife.
“And annually, they do a check-up for me, and then when I do that check-up, I then have that check-up double-checked when I go to Cuba or Venezuela. That makes me not confident about our medical system?”
Gonsalves said that reports are that Kartel is pleased with the healthcare he has received in SVG.
“I understand he’s been quite satisfied with the care and attention that the specialists, like the endocrinologist, the internal medicine professionals, the younger doctors, everybody who constituted part of the team [have provided],” Gonsalves said on NBC Radio on Wednesday.
The prime minister’s comments were the first by a government official since Kartel, who was freed of a murder charged last month after 13 years in prison, arrived in SVG on Aug. 16.
“I know that when he had said that he was considering St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Cuba or Switzerland, the naysayer, ‘Way he come here for? Whappen, anything in St. Vincent?’ … Those same persons are now scrambling for some other excuses,” Gonsalves said.
“The simple fact of the matter is that over the last 23 years, we have developed the medical system in St. Vincent and Grenadines, remarkably,” the prime minister said, referring to the time that his Unity Labour Party has been in office.
“And this is not a time for us to go through the details, because I don’t want to go there. We can do another time… “
Gonsalves said that in any medical system, there would occasionally be “bad cases which arise, or cases in which persons didn’t feel that they received the optimal treatment.
“But tell me where you don’t find that?” he said, adding, “The question is, when those happen, you learn from them, acknowledge and learn from them.”
Gonsalves was recalling on state radio comments he said he made in an interview with a Jamaica radio station sometime earlier.
He said the Jamaican journalist had asked him if Kartel’s visit was the beginning of medical tourism in SVG.
“That didn’t enter my head,” said Gonsalves, who had earlier said that allowing the artiste to receive medical attention in SVG was an act of mercy.
“As you know, we’re starting this modern acute care hospital. But people tend to forget that we have a set of specialists here whom we have brought in,” Gonsalves said, adding that the specialists are in the country under various programmes.
He mentioned the World Pediatric Project and the Cuban Medical Brigade.
“Plus, of course, specialists like Doctor J, who have been here for many years and develop their skills, and a top-notch professionals.”
The prime minister said he had learnt that SVG had received a lot of publicity because of Kartel’s presence.
“I’ve seen, for instance, a little thing which he has done with Problem Child that has over a million views,” Gonsalves said, referring to a Vincentian soca artiste.
“Could you imagine that? Phenomenal! And I understand that he’s interested in meeting some young cultural artists and to talk to them, and also to talk to persons to be disciplined and stay away from criminal activities. That’s what I’ve been advised,” said Gonsalves, who is also minister of national security.
“I didn’t ask him to do any of that. That is being done independently…”
Quoting the Bible, Gonsalves said that Kartel’s presence in SVG was an act of “mercy”.
“It was just a human thing of mercy. And they said that.”
He confirmed that he had met the artiste since his arrival in SVG.
“Of course, I’ve met him since he came. I say he’s not a leper. As far as I’m aware he doesn’t have any contagious disease that he’ll deliver it onto me. I hope that in this peculiar manner, in this incident, in this case, that we can all use it, among other things as a teaching moment on the exercise of mercy.”
The prime minister said he had asked his press officer, Shevrell “Candyman” McMillian “to help facilitate …, see the arrangements are there, how they get him to the doctor and — but once that is done, that’s in their hands.”
Ralph Gonsalves will say anything that comes into his head because the rest of us are not paying attention. These statements are nothing short of ludicrous. Imagine a man seeking medical advise would chose a SVG hospital over Cuban medical facility or a Swiss clinic . SVG hospital is where you go in for a sprain little finger and end up dead. The Marxist communist can run he mouth all he want, his time is coming.
When has anyone gone to the hospital and had a “team” of doctors attended to them?
Yes , SVG has very good doctors, but the facilities and equipment are atrocious to say the least.
so wa bin busses yo head? Is it a security watch ? a baton ? a weapon ? a remote control key? which? In me opinion I tink it’s a security watch – accidentally.
Will Vincentians get the same treatment as Vybes Kartel? Will they roll out red carpet as they did for him?
hope dem prescribe two intravenous medication fo um and tell um fo leave one fo donation and at midnight tell um if yo want yo life go wake up a pharmacist to get medication (emergency drugs) truly not a real place)
cha!