Gail Alexan­der

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley, who is said to be suf­fer­ing from the ‘flu’, was grant­ed leave from Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day - the lat­est en­gage­ment the PM has missed since he fell ill re­cent­ly.

Row­ley has missed re­cent dai­ly en­gage­ments since it was re­port­ed on Tues­day that he was ill.

Though he was in the midst of last Sun­day’s PNM con­ven­tion in Port of Spain- and look­ing in good spir­its then - Row­ley didn’t at­tend Tues­day’s PNM Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment cam­paign meet­ing in San Fer­nan­do where it was re­vealed he had the flu. Nor did he at­tend a PNM “elec­tion good­ies” func­tion in the bat­tle­ground seat of San­gre Grande on Wednes­day.

On Thurs­day Row­ley was al­so ab­sent from PNM’s Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment cam­paign meet­ing in San Juan though he’d been ad­ver­tised in ra­dio ads to at­tend.

At the San Juan meet­ing, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert said Row­ley was down with a bout of the flu but was “re­cov­er­ing well.” Im­bert was the fea­tured speak­er for that meet­ing in­stead of Row­ley.

Yes­ter­day in Par­lia­ment where Row­ley was sched­uled to an­swer ques­tions in the usu­al month­ly seg­ment, House Speak­er Bridgid An­nisette- George said Row­ley had sought leave from yes­ter­day’s sit­ting. The ques­tions for the Prime Min­is­ter were de­ferred to the next sit­ting.

PNM’s Bal­isi­er House head­quar­ters said the next PNM Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment meet­ing is at Sig­na­ture Hall in Ch­agua­nas next Tues­day and Row­ley is ex­pect­ed to at­tend.

Yes­ter­day in Par­lia­ment, Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh said Gov­ern­ment has brought in 100,000 dos­es of the flu vac­cine which are avail­able at all health cen­tres. But he said the up­take by the pub­lic on vac­cines at the health cen­tres has been “dis­ap­point­ing­ly low.”

Deyals­ingh added, “I urge the cat­e­gories of peo­ple that would like to vac­ci­nate - preg­nant women, chil­dren be­tween six months to five years, those im­muno-com­pro­mised, the el­der­ly, es­pe­cial­ly those with di­a­betes and health care work­ers, make your­selves avail­able for the free vac­cines.”

On a spe­cif­ic case, Deyals­ingh said there was one sus­pect­ed case of the H1N1 flu at the Ch­agua­nas North Sec­ondary School con­cern­ing a teacher. He said the teacher has since ful­ly re­cov­ered. But he said there has been no con­fir­ma­tion of H1n1 at the school. He added that since the teacher’s ill­ness, the school has been sani­tised.