Geisha Kow­lessar

Al­though the med­ical con­di­tion of en­vi­ron­men­tal ac­tivist Dr Wayne Kublals­ingh has been de­scribed by his doc­tor as "crit­i­cal," he has re­fused to be hos­pi­talised or to take in­tra­venous (IV) drips.Dr As­ante Van West-Charles-Le Blanc, who mon­i­tored Kublals­ingh dur­ing his 21-day hunger strike in 2012, vis­it­ed his camp out­side the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter, St Clair, yes­ter­day.

Kublals­ingh com­plet­ed day 17 of his hunger strike yes­ter­day to protest against the con­struc­tion of the Debe to Mon De­sir sec­tion of the Solomon Ho­choy High­way ex­ten­sion to Pt Fortin.Af­ter ex­am­in­ing Kublals­ingh for about 10 min­utes, the doc­tor told mem­bers of the me­dia there had been a de­cline in his vi­tal signs.

"There is a def­i­nite de­te­ri­o­ra­tion of the body. His mind is still very clear, and so I had to re­it­er­ate he is alert, ori­ent­ed. There is no men­tal deficit at this point but his body is de­te­ri­o­rat­ing slow­ly," Van West-Charles-Le Blanc said.Giv­ing fur­ther de­tails, she said as Kublals­ingh's body had been de­prived of food and wa­ter the bod­i­ly func­tions would slow down and nat­u­ral­ly stop.

"The ul­ti­mate re­sult, if he does not eat or drink, will be death. At this point we are see­ing the body is com­pen­sat­ing for the lack of food and wa­ter. At this point the com­pen­sa­tion mech­a­nism has ba­si­cal­ly burnt out...so the blood pres­sure is show­ing signs of de­crease."His pe­riph­er­al cir­cu­la­tion is show­ing signs of slow­ing down be­cause the body tries to con­serve the ma­jor or­gans be­fore death and so that is what we are see­ing right now."

Van West-Charles-Le Blanc said Kublals­ingh's blood sug­ar lev­els had al­so de­creased."It was sta­ble for a while and in the last two to three days there has been a rapid de­cline of the blood sug­ar, and ba­si­cal­ly the heart has tak­en a beat­ing."Be­tween days 15 to now I have seen a much faster de­cline in his de­te­ri­o­ra­tion," she said.She said the last set of tests showed there were prob­lems with Kublals­ingh's kid­neys. Whether the dam­age was ir­repara­ble or not Van West-Charles-Le Blanc was un­able to say.

On whether Kublals­ingh should be hos­pi­talised she said, "As a physi­cian, and as his physi­cian, I ad­vise him on what he should do, which is to hy­drate and re­hy­drate and nour­ish the body."How­ev­er, it must be not­ed that Dr Kublals­ingh is of sound mind. He ex­press­es his wish­es to me and I do have to re­spect those wish­es and it's a very thin line, med­ical­ly speak­ing."Whether or not he needs hos­pi­tal­i­sa­tion right now, I'd rather not com­ment."

Mind stronger than body

Asked about how long could Kublals­ingh's body en­dure the hunger strike, Van West-Charles-Le Blanc said this was dif­fi­cult to tell, adding that she had be­gun to re­search the top­ic."I think he has a tremen­dous re­silience and I think this is proof that the mind is in­deed a very strong com­po­nent to the body's func­tion­ing," Van West-Charles-Le Blanc said.

A gaunt-look­ing Kublals­ingh com­plained about feel­ing weak and de­hy­drat­ed yes­ter­day. He said he had a bad night and was un­able to sleep.But the strike, he added, would on­ly stop when Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar agreed to abide by her promise to re­view the Debe to Mon De­sir High­way, which was al­so rec­om­mend­ed in the Arm­strong re­port.