Gail Alexan­der

De­spite be­ing the tar­get of the Op­po­si­tion’s at­tacks last night, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley was said to be con­tin­u­ing on the mend af­ter his an­gio­plas­ty at the West Shore Hos­pi­tal last week­end.

Row­ley and Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young were the tar­gets of ac­cu­sa­tions by Op­po­si­tion Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment Rod­ney Charles at last night’s UNC meet­ing.

Charles, say­ing T&T’s for­eign po­lice don’t serve the na­tion­al in­ter­est, slammed poli­cies in­clud­ing on mi­grant/refugee is­sues, Venezuela and oth­er mat­ters.

Charles asked if Dr Row­ley, as CARI­COM chair­man will seize the op­por­tu­ni­ty to try and re­solve the sim­mer­ing Venezuela/Guyana mar­itime bor­der is­sue.

Row­ley how­ev­er, is re­cu­per­at­ing af­ter he was tak­en to the pri­vate hos­pi­tal last Fri­day suf­fer­ing from dis­com­fort and re­port­ed car­diac is­sues. Af­ter overnight ob­ser­va­tion and tests—in­clud­ing an an­giogram—an an­gio­plas­ty was done.

An­gio­plas­ty is a com­mon pro­ce­dure to open clogged ar­ter­ies where­by a tiny bal­loon is used to widen the artery.

It’s de­scribed as a method to al­le­vi­ate not on­ly clogged ar­ter­ies and angi­na that can’t be con­trolled by med­ica­tion but al­so as an emer­gency process if some­one’s hav­ing a heart at­tack.

Af­ter the an­gio­plas­ty, Dr Row­ley was as­sessed by doc­tors last Sun­day and dis­charged.

The Prime Min­is­ter’s of­fice didn’t is­sue any word on Row­ley’s con­di­tion yes­ter­day.

Min­is­ter in the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter Stu­art Young didn’t re­ply to What­sApp queries on Dr Row­ley’s day, if he was am­bu­la­to­ry, when he’d re­turn to work, and on who is pay­ing for the stay at the pri­vate hos­pi­tal.

But sev­er­al Cab­i­net mem­bers said Dr Row­ley was “good….and rest­ing” and he’d been talk­ing to some min­is­ters. They had no idea when he’d re­turn to work.

Yes­ter­day, nor­mal Gov­ern­ment func­tions which Dr Row­ley usu­al­ly heads con­tin­ued, in­clud­ing a Cab­i­net sub-com­mit­tee meet­ing.

Bharath wish­es PM well, Roodal do­ing tests

The UNC’s Vas­ant Bharath who suf­fered a heart at­tack in De­cem­ber 2008, yes­ter­day wished Dr Row­ley a speedy re­cov­ery.

In 2008 Bharath, was rushed to the St Clair Med­ical Cen­tre and had to have a stent in­sert­ed. That is a tiny tube of met­al mesh or plas­tic to keep a blocked artery open.

Bharath said, “Pol­i­tics is a stress­ful pro­fes­sion. I wish Dr Row­ley good health as he’s go­ing to re­quire all his fac­ul­ties to be in full play to han­dle the chal­lenges we face ahead.”

Bharath said he had no prob­lems since his heart at­tack 13 years ago and hasn’t had by-pass surgery. He said a doc­tor who saw him two months ago, said the stent was in the same shape in which it was in­sert­ed and his car­dio­gram al­so showed no is­sue.

Bharath said his on­ly changes since suf­fer­ing the heart at­tack was “a lit­tle more fre­quent ex­er­cise and be­ing a lit­tle more care­ful in what I eat...but no ma­jor di­et change.”

Yes­ter­day, UNC MP Dr Roodal Mooni­lal, who was among the first to wish Dr Row­ley well last Fri­day, said, “Dr Row­ley’s mat­ter and his treat­ment is a wake-up call for us all in pub­lic life un­der­tak­ing the stress­es and rigours of pub­lic ser­vice and po­lit­i­cal con­flict of all kinds.”

“This in­ci­dent re­minds us all our health is our wealth and I must con­fess to be­ing very delin­quent in man­ag­ing mine but this has jolt­ed me in­to mak­ing the nec­es­sary ap­point­ment to a com­plete blood­work check, to em­bark on a weight loss pro­gramme and to re­turn to the golf course,” he said.

There are a num­ber of peo­ple on the Op­po­si­tion bench­es in the Up­per and Low­er Hous­es, in­clud­ing Op­po­si­tion leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, man­ag­ing health is­sues. On Gov­ern­ment’s side, there’s al­so a sig­nif­i­cant num­ber of peo­ple man­ag­ing health is­sues.

While Dr Row­ley has re­ceived ‘Get Well’ mes­sages from some, there’s al­so been a stream of neg­a­tive com­ments.

PNM com­mu­ni­ca­tions man­ag­er Lau­rel Leza­ma-Lee Sing said yes­ter­day, “I saw pos­i­tive com­ments from peo­ple. But the on­ly neg­a­tive com­ments were un­der the Op­po­si­tion Leader’s brief ‘Get Well’ greet­ing where her sup­port­ers said some of the most vile, vit­ri­olic things. Those com­ments were nei­ther dis­cour­aged or re­moved. It speaks of the cold, bit­ter hearts that ex­ist in some sec­tors of so­ci­ety.”

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley’s health­care costs will be born by the State, ac­cord­ing to the con­di­tions of his re­mu­ner­a­tion pack­age.

This was con­firmed yes­ter­day by Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials.

Un­der the Salaries Re­view Com­mis­sion’s 98th re­port (2013) rec­om­men­da­tions, the list­ing for ‘Prime Min­is­ter’ states, “Med­ical Ben­e­fits En­ti­tle­ment to med­ical at­ten­tion/treat­ment and pre­scribed drugs for self, spouse and chil­dren who are un­mar­ried and un­der the age of eigh­teen, at any health­care fa­cil­i­ty un­der the Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ties, in­clud­ing the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex. Where such med­ical at­ten­tion/treat­ment is not avail­able at such health­care fa­cil­i­ty, the costs at any oth­er hos­pi­tal, in­sti­tu­tion or nurs­ing home in Trinidad and To­ba­go to be met by the State. (‘Med­ical at­ten­tion/treat­ment’ ex­cludes op­ti­cal and den­tal treat­ment/ser­vices. ‘Pre­scribed drugs’ ex­clude drugs which are ob­tain­able with­out a pre­scrip­tion.)”

A source stat­ed that costs for the treat­ment, and for any nec­es­sary fol­low-ups, will like­ly be tak­en to Cab­i­net for ap­proval.

They not­ed, “Costs will be paid for by the State. The State has paid for health­care costs for for­mer prime min­is­ters Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and Bas­deo Pan­day con­tin­u­ing up to to­day and for in­stance wher­ev­er Mr Pan­day has had health­care treat­ment.”