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Friday, July 11, 2025

Imbert: PM healthy like a young boy

by

Gail Alexander
2310 days ago
20190314
Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley poses with his doctor in California earlier this week. He posted the photo on his Facebook page after announcing he would not need heart surgery.

Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley poses with his doctor in California earlier this week. He posted the photo on his Facebook page after announcing he would not need heart surgery.

Fit as a “young boy,” Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley re­turns home from Cal­i­for­nia next Tues­day, hav­ing not had to do any heart surgery and “with all the char­ac­ter­is­tics of a young per­son.”

This was the de­scrip­tion con­veyed by Act­ing Prime Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert yes­ter­day as he an­nounced Row­ley’s an­tic­i­pat­ed re­turn.

Row­ley, who turns 70 in Oc­to­ber, went to Cal­i­for­nia 10 days ago - Car­ni­val Tues­day - to do heart tests on soft plaque which had been found in his artery in 2016 and sub­se­quent­ly dis­cov­ered to have got­ten big­ger. Pri­or to his de­par­ture, Row­ley had said his lo­cal doc­tor told him on Feb­ru­ary 18 that the mat­ter need­ed im­me­di­ate at­ten­tion.

While in Cal­i­for­nia - a lo­ca­tion where he’d un­der­gone Prostate Speci­fi­ca Anti­gen (PSA) tests in 2016- Row­ley un­der­went batch­es of tests on March 6 and 9 and up to Mon­day gone.

On Tues­day, Row­ley post­ed a Face­book pic­ture with his car­di­ol­o­gist - all smiles - say­ing he was told that day there’s no need for surgery. How­ev­er, he said he’d re­main un­der ob­ser­va­tion a few more days and re­turn home soon.

At yes­ter­day’s post-Cab­i­net me­dia con­fer­ence, Im­bert said Row­ley will be re­turn­ing via a Caribbean Air­lines flight from New York.

Im­bert said, “I’m ad­vised by the Prime Min­is­ter that his test pro­ce­dures went very well. The Face­book post­ing that ap­peared was ac­cu­rate: the Prime Min­is­ter doesn’t re­quire surgery and we’re thank­ful our prayers have been an­swered and we look for­ward to his re­turn Tues­day.

“I just got a lit­tle up­date that he’s do­ing very well. He just did a stress test and has ‘all the char­ac­ter­is­tics of a young per­son’ - that’s what I’m told,” Im­bert added, smil­ing.

“So that’s very good news for us. Our prayers have been an­swered.”

On a re­cent Reuters re­port about Trinidad Pe­tro­le­um’s talks with over­seas fi­nanciers, Im­bert said the talks with the fi­nanciers and rat­ing agen­cies are go­ing well. He said the talks were on re­fi­nanc­ing of Petrotrin’s US$850 mil­lion bond and to raise fi­nance for Trinidad Pe­tro­le­um’s op­er­a­tions. The com­pa­ny is the hold­ing com­pa­ny which suc­ceed­ed Petrotrin, which was re­struc­tured last year.

The bond is due for pay­ment in Au­gust. An­oth­er US$750m bond is due in 2022. Im­bert said fi­nanciers were see­ing po­ten­tial in the com­pa­ny.

—Gail Alexan­der


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