Resh­ma Ra­goonath

Pres­i­dent Emer­i­tus of the T&T Heart Foun­da­tion Dr Al­lan Mc Ken­zie was among four peo­ple who were re­cent­ly recog­nised for their char­i­ty work and con­tri­bu­tion to the foun­da­tion.

At its Awards and In­stal­la­tion Din­ner, held at Soong's Great Wall Restau­rant and Lounge, San Fer­nan­do, the foun­da­tion al­so recog­nised Joan Awardy, Paul Reg­is and Dipin­der Manocha.

In a brief ad­dress, Mc Ken­zie told the new­ly ap­point­ed ex­ec­u­tive he was charg­ing them with the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of ed­u­cat­ing cit­i­zens about the per­ils of heart dis­ease.

He cau­tioned they may en­counter an up­hill strug­gle as many cit­i­zens did not be­lieve it could hap­pen to them. Point­ing out that heart dis­ease can strike any­one at any­time, Mc Ken­zie said, "one of the dif­fi­cult things work­ing with the heart as­so­ci­a­tion is that most peo­ple be­lieve they will nev­er get heart dis­ease or a heart at­tack.

"We all as­sume when we go home this evening (Sat­ur­day) we will get up in the morn­ing. That is part of the prob­lem."

The non-prof­it or­gan­i­sa­tion, which was found­ed in1996, has been en­gaged in ed­u­ca­tion pro­grammes and char­i­ty events.

Mc Ken­zie en­cour­age the ex­ec­u­tive to take the foun­da­tion, with its no­ble vi­sion for the fu­ture, to a new lev­el

"We must stop want­i­ng to be an or­na­men­tal as­so­ci­a­tion where peo­ple look at us and talk about us and the glit­ter with which we at­tract our­selves. We must be func­tion­al," he said.

Mc Ken­zie ad­mit­ted that he knows it will be dif­fi­cult to do since the Health min­istry "has been far too con­spic­u­ous with its ne­glect of the Foun­da­tion."

How­ev­er, he urged the new ex­ec­u­tive not to give up and to con­tin­ue to per­se­vere.