Richard Lord

Dr Gre­go­ry Bisses­sar, hus­band of Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, un­der­went triple by-pass surgery at the St Clair Med­ical Cen­tre yes­ter­day.Fol­low­ing the op­er­a­tion, which took about three-and-a-half hours, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said she was hap­py it went well as it had an el­e­ment of risk.Bisses­sar was tak­en to the hos­pi­tal last Fri­day for and an­giog­ra­phy af­ter com­plain­ing of chest pains.Doc­tors lat­er had ad­vised there was need for surgery to cor­rect the block­age in his veins.The surgery was per­formed by doc­tors from Caribbean Heart Care.

The head car­diac sur­geon was Prof Gio­van­ni Tedori and in­clud­ed Dr Anand Ram­per­sad, Dr Natasha Ra­haman-Gan­ga and Dr Ka­mal Ram­per­sad."God is great," was the first re­sponse of Per­sad-Bisses­sar who spoke with the me­dia af­ter the surgery.With a smile on her face, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said she spoke with her hus­band af­ter the surgery."He is ac­tu­al­ly mak­ing jokes and start­ing to do ex­er­cis­es... Thank God," she added.She was ac­com­pa­nied by Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Tim Gopeesingh, rel­a­tives and of­fi­cials from the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter.

Sev­er­al min­is­ters vis­it­ed the hos­pi­tal yes­ter­day, in­clud­ing Hous­ing and the En­vi­ron­ment Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal, Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Chan­dresh Shar­ma, Le­gal Af­fairs Min­is­ter Prakash Ra­mad­har, Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion Min­is­ter Rudrawatie Nan Ram­goolam, Sci­ence Min­is­ter Fazal Karim and Min­is­ter of the Peo­ple and So­cial De­vel­op­ment Glenn Ra­mad­hars­ingh.Per­sad-Bisses­sar ar­rived at the hos­pi­tal about one hour af­ter the surgery be­gan."He is do­ing very well so far," she added.She ex­pressed her grat­i­tude to cit­i­zens who sup­port­ed her by send­ing text mes­sages, of­fer­ing prayers and love.She said that in­ci­dent high­light­ed the im­por­tance of di­et­ing and ex­er­cis­ing prop­er­ly. She said that must be­come the or­der of the day for her hus­band, her­self and all cit­i­zens over the age of 45.

She then said she had to get some rest. She did not take ques­tions on the Jack Warn­er con­tro­ver­sy. "I will be back lat­er," she said as she left the hos­pi­tal.Ear­li­er, Gopeesingh said the surgery had cost Bisses­sar about $150,000. He said it went smooth­ly and he was ex­pect­ed to re­main at the fa­cil­i­ty for sev­en days.He said the Prime Min­is­ter was in a near­by room dur­ing the surgery. She was giv­en fre­quent up­dates. Gopeesingh said he was al­lowed to mon­i­tor the surgery.Dr Ram­per­sad, who al­so spoke with re­porters yes­ter­day, said Bisses­sar's op­er­a­tion was "pret­ty rou­tine."