By CLINT CHAN TACK, www.newsday.co.tt

GOVERNMENT could soon be sending citizens who require tissue transplants to Cuba for life saving treatment, according to Health Minister John Rahael. He said a catalyst for this initiative was 20-year-old Keston Williams who died at the Eric Williams Medical Sciences Complex (EWMSC) on March 11 from complications related to Focal Segmental Glomerulosclerosis. Friends of Williams said passage of the Human Tissue Transplant Bill could have allowed him to get the medical treatment he desperately needed.

Rahael said he has been receiving letters from many persons saying that they were looking as far away as Pakistan to undergo tissue transplant procedures. The Minister said Government has initiated discussions with Cuba about the possibility of needy persons being flown to Havana for tissue transplant procedures at Government's expense. He said a team from the Health Ministry, headed by Permanent Secretary Hamid O'Brian, was due to return from Havana yesterday and he expects a report on their discussions with Cuban government officials by Wednesday. Rahael said the TT-Cuba initiative for citizens desperately requiring tissue transplants would remain in place until the necessary legislation to undertake the procedures locally, is passed. He said the legislation is currently before the Legislative Review Council and should be laid in Parliament in two months time.

Speaking in the House of Representatives on July 4, 2003, former Health Minister Dr Hamza Rafeeq questioned why the Human Tissue Transplant Act's regulations had not been implemented although the Act was passed two years earlier. In an August 25, 2003 interview, then Health Minister Colm Imbert said the UNC was trying to divert public attention from their incompetence in passing that legislation. "Just last week, I approved regulations concerning brain-stem death. All the conditions and regulations are being sorted out," Imbert said. He was optimistic Parliament would have approved legislation to implement the Human Tissue Transplant Act 2000's regulations either by the end of September or early October, with all the mechanisms in place by December 31 for tissue transplant procedures to be undertaken in TT. Imbert was replaced by Rahael in a November 7, 2003 Cabinet reshuffle.