St. Vincent PM Discharged From Hospital In Cuba

KINGSTOWN, St. Vincent, CMC – Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves has been discharged from hospital in Cuba, 10 days after he arrived on the Spanish-speaking Caribbean nation to receive treatment for a leg injury.

Gonsalves announced his release in a call to his party’s radio station Thursday night.

The 68-year-old leader told listeners that he is doing well, and had just had dinner with the island’s ambassador to Havana, Dexter Rose. Gonsalves said he is now staying in a protocol house.

He left for Havana in an air ambulance on September 22, one day after his office announced that an injury to his right rectus femoris had seriously affected his mobility.

Communications consultant in the Office of the Prime Minister, Elson Crick, said earlier this week that “conservative estimates” were that Gonsalves will return to St. Vincent by the end of next week.

He said on Friday that that estimation still stands, since Gonsalves will still receive treatment although he is no longer hospitalized.

The Prime Minister’s treatment in Cuba is the second in a foreign country this year.

In May, he underwent a surgical procedure in Europe to correct what he described as “niggling pain” where a surgical procedure had been done in Barbados two years earlier.

In April of this year, doctors ordered Gonsalves to rest as a result of an ankle injury the Prime Minister said he sustained in his bathroom.

In July, Gonsalves was seen walking with a slight limp, and told reporters that he had injured his knee, but not seriously.