Two years ago, Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies stu­dent Chloe Ram­nar­ine learned her can­cer had re­turned. What could have been a mo­ment de­fined by fear in­stead be­came the start of a jour­ney that would open new path­ways for can­cer treat­ment for pa­tients across the re­gion.

“The mo­ment be­tween ‘and the Gram­my goes to’ and hear­ing the name of your team is lit­er­al­ly breath­tak­ing. My heart skipped two beats, at least. And then when I heard ‘In­tel­li­gence’, there was this rush of adren­a­line. The first feel­ing is dis­be­lief and then in­cred­i­ble ex­cite­ment, ela­tion,” re­called 56-year-old Trinida­di­an-Cana­di­an mu­sic con­duc­tor Kwamé Ryan.

Car­ing for some­one with can­cer takes an enor­mous amount of pa­tience and com­pas­sion, traits that phle­botomist Eliz­a­beth Atwell has learned to mas­ter over her 29 years of work­ing in the med­ical field.

Trinida­di­an po­et Gilberte Jas­mine Farah (O’Sul­li­van) (1971–2026) went in­to a co­ma on Jan­u­ary 11 and died in Brighton, UK on the 25 from a mas­sive stroke hours be­fore Sea Blast, her de­but col­lec­tion, was pub­lished.

Bo­cas Lit Fest sup­port­ed The Shel­ter-A Safe House for Sur­vivors of Do­mes­tic Vi­o­lence through its year-end Books that Build Hope do­na­tion dri­ve, in part­ner­ship with Pa­per Based Book­shop.

As a gy­nae­col­o­gist, I have the priv­i­lege of car­ing for women through every stage of life—from ado­les­cence and moth­er­hood to menopause and be­yond. As this coun­try ob­served World Can­cer Day on Feb­ru­ary 4, I want­ed to share an im­por­tant mes­sage: many can­cers af­fect­ing women can be pre­vent­ed, de­tect­ed ear­ly, or treat­ed suc­cess­ful­ly if we act in a time­ly man­ner.

World Can­cer Aware­ness Day, ob­served an­nu­al­ly on Feb­ru­ary 4, seeks to raise aware­ness about can­cer and en­cour­age its pre­ven­tion, de­tec­tion, and treat­ment. On this year’s World Can­cer Day, themed “Unit­ed by Unique” we are called to re­mem­ber our col­lec­tive com­mit­ment against can­cer, and the World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion ac­knowl­edges every pa­tient’s unique ex­pe­ri­ences and the val­ue of peo­ple-cen­tered care de­liv­ered joint­ly by health­care providers, fam­i­lies, friends and com­mu­ni­ty.

Can­cer touch­es al­most every fam­i­ly in Trinidad and To­ba­go, of­ten qui­et­ly, some­times sud­den­ly, but al­ways pro­found­ly. Be­hind the sta­tis­tics, screen­ing cam­paigns and fundrais­ing dri­ves are in­di­vid­u­als who have car­ried the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of steer­ing in­sti­tu­tions through grief, hope, lim­it­ed re­sources and grow­ing pub­lic ex­pec­ta­tion. One such in­di­vid­ual is Robert Du­mas, for­mer chair­man of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Can­cer So­ci­ety, whose tenure co­in­cid­ed with an ex­pand­ing na­tion­al con­ver­sa­tion about can­cer pre­ven­tion, pa­tient sup­port and the role of civ­il so­ci­ety in pub­lic health.

For Mar­sha Joseph, a 52-year-old teacher at Tacarigua Pres­by­ter­ian Pri­ma­ry School, can­cer was nev­er out of her or­bit, as she had fam­i­ly and friends af­fect­ed by the ill­ness and close­ly fol­lowed the work of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Can­cer So­ci­ety. How­ev­er, in 2024, it loomed large in her life. As she was on the brink of a new sea­son, in the year that she was turn­ing 50, she and her hus­band were cel­e­brat­ing their 25th wed­ding an­niver­sary, and her chil­dren were grow­ing in­to young adults, she nev­er imag­ined that she would al­so be nav­i­gat­ing a breast can­cer jour­ney.

Long be­fore the stage lights, the tours, and the chart place­ments, there was a lit­tle girl in To­co singing at the top of her lungs dur­ing fam­i­ly praise and wor­ship.

One year ago, Kristo­pher Mo­hamed’s life changed in a way no teenag­er ex­pects. The for­mer Na­pari­ma Col­lege stu­dent, on the cusp of med­ical school and adult­hood, was di­ag­nosed with Stage IV Hodgkin’s Lym­phoma, a di­ag­no­sis that forced him to con­front the fear of mor­tal­i­ty far ear­li­er than most of his peers.

So­ca and steel­pan came to­geth­er to en­ter­tain and en­gage thou­sands gath­ered at the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah on Sun­day Feb­ru­ary 1, as BH En­ter­tain­ment host­ed the an­nu­al “Pan On The Greens” ex­pe­ri­ence.