Yvonne Webb

Dr Anand Cha­toor­goon says en­vi­ron­men­tal ac­tivist Dr Wayne Kublals­ingh is in the dan­ger zone and warned that he could slip in­to a co­ma and even­tu­al­ly die, if he con­tin­ues with his hunger strike. The con­sul­tant anaes­the­si­ol­o­gist said the body can go with­out food for one to two weeks, but wa­ter is crit­i­cal to sur­vival.

Kublals­ingh's con­di­tion has de­te­ri­o­rat­ed sig­nif­i­cant­ly since he em­barked on a hunger strike a week ago, to cause the Gov­ern­ment to put on hold the Debe to Mon De­sir sec­tion of the San Fer­nan­do to Point Fortin High­way.

He has sworn to nei­ther eat nor drink un­til Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar keeps her promise to es­tab­lish a com­mit­tee to re­view the pro­posed con­struc­tion. The Ox­ford-ed­u­cat­ed Kublals­ingh has plant­ed him­self out­side the Prime Min­is­ter's St Clair of­fice, where two am­bu­lances are on stand­by-one sup­plied by the Gov­ern­ment and the oth­er by his rel­a­tives, to take him to hos­pi­tal in the event his con­di­tion wors­ens.

How­ev­er, a de­fi­ant Kublals­ingh has re­ject­ed the Gov­ern­ment's of­fer. He told his moth­er and mem­bers of the High­way Re-route Move­ment (HRM), who are sup­port­ing his cause, that if any­thing hap­pens to him, he does not want to go to any pri­vate fa­cil­i­ty, but should be tak­en to the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal.

As he did on Mon­day when Health Min­is­ter Dr Fuad Khan vis­it­ed him, Kublals­ingh chased away Le­gal Af­fairs Min­is­ter Prakash Ra­mad­har, who stopped by for a vis­it on Tues­day.

Ra­mad­har, be­fore be­com­ing a min­is­ter of gov­ern­ment, was part of the move­ment be­fore it be­came HRM, and al­so joined with Kublals­ingh and oth­ers in their suc­cess­ful bid to stop the con­struc­tion of the smelter plant at La Brea. For­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj and for­mer min­is­ter in the NAR ad­min­is­tra­tion Lennox Sankers­ingh al­so joined Kublals­ingh on Tues­day.

Ma­haraj said it was un­con­scionable that Per­sad-Bisses­sar would not meet with Kublals­ingh and bring about a res­o­lu­tion. Speak­ing from a med­ical point of view, Cha­toor­goon said the hu­man body can go with­out food for a week or two, but af­ter one week with­out wa­ter, the ef­fects of de­hy­dra­tion would man­i­fest it­self on the var­i­ous or­gans of the body, but es­pe­cial­ly the brain.

"He can be­come ob­tund­ed, which means, his con­scious lev­el is not what it nor­mal­ly is. He could be­come un­con­scious, and even­tu­al­ly slip in­to a co­ma. If un­treat­ed, he could even­tu­al­ly die," Cha­toor­goon said. In his ca­pac­i­ty as chair­man of the Sathya Sai Ba­ba Cen­tre of San Fer­nan­do, Chat­ter­goon al­so ap­pealed to the Prime Min­is­ter to meet with Kublals­ingh.

"If she does not move quick­ly, he could be­come un­con­scious, in which case it would make no sense,"?Cha­toor­goon said on Tues­day. He ex­pressed the view that the Prime Min­is­ter was be­ing mis­led and mis­guid­ed by those around her.