SHAR­LENE RAM­PER­SAD

Dr Leslie Ram­sam­my, the Guyanese doc­tor who launched a scathing at­tack on Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley on Thurs­day says his state­ments were made on his own be­half and main­tains he’s stand­ing by them.

On Thurs­day, Ram­sam­my, an ad­vi­sor to the Min­istry of Health in Guyana, sent an opin­ion piece to Guyanese me­dia hous­es, la­belling Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley as reck­less and out of line.

He claimed Dr Row­ley in­sult­ed Guyana and 74 oth­er coun­tries where the Russ­ian-made Sput­nik vac­cine is used.

He re­ferred to state­ments made by Dr Row­ley on June 12, where the Prime Min­is­ter claimed T&T had the best vac­cine pro­gramme in the Cari­com.

“In de­fend­ing the vac­cine fi­as­co in his coun­try, Prime Min­is­ter Row­ley, un­wit­ting­ly or de­lib­er­ate­ly, im­plied that Guyana’s suc­cess­ful vac­ci­na­tion pro­gram so far is an il­lu­sion be­cause Guyana uti­lized vac­cines not ap­proved for use. He boast­ed that Trinidad and To­ba­go has the most vac­cine dos­es al­ready in the coun­try than any oth­er coun­try in CARI­COM, ex­cept Guyana, but that Guyana’s vac­cines do not count since they are not ap­proved,” Ram­sam­my wrote.

He said the Prime Min­is­ter could try to change the nar­ra­tive of T&T’s vac­cine pro­gramme but not at Guyana’s ex­pense.

“First of all, at the time Trinidad and To­ba­go’s Prime Min­is­ter stat­ed that Trinidad and To­ba­go had with­in their coun­try 234,000 dos­es of vac­cines, Guyana had in our pos­ses­sion 465,000 dos­es of vac­cines, twice the amount of dos­es that Prime Min­is­ter Row­ley’s coun­try had,” Ram­sam­my wrote.

How­ev­er, he said the num­ber of vac­cines was not the im­por­tant point, as he ac­cused Row­ley of ques­tion­ing the le­git­i­ma­cy of the vac­cines be­ing used by Guyana.

“Let me make it clear – all the vac­cines in use in Guyana were reg­is­tered and ap­proved for use by Guyana’s Food and Drug An­a­lyst De­part­ment. Those reg­is­tra­tions and ap­provals are not au­to­mat­ic. They are based on a num­ber of con­sid­er­a­tions and a process Guyana has used for decades. It is the same process that saved thou­sands of lives when we reg­is­tered In­di­an-pro­duced and lo­cal­ly-pro­duced HIV med­i­cines.”

Guardian Me­dia sent ques­tions to Ram­sam­my via email, ask­ing whether his state­ments re­flect the views of the Guyanese Health Min­istry. Ram­sam­my was al­so told that T&T’s Min­istry of For­eign and CARI­COM Af­fairs de­nied the Prime Min­is­ter made the state­ments at­trib­uted to him by Ram­sam­my.

In his re­sponse, Ram­sam­my said, “I speak on my own be­half. I stand by my state­ment.”

Guardian Me­dia al­so sent ques­tions to Guyana’s Health Min­is­ter Dr Frank An­tho­ny by send­ing ques­tions via What­sApp. An­tho­ny read the ques­tions but up to press time, he had not re­spond­ed. 

The George­town Cham­ber of Com­merce and In­dus­try (GC­CI) al­so joined the for­ay, as it is­sued a press re­lease slam­ming Row­ley and Guyana’s Op­po­si­tion Par­ty.

“We al­so note, with con­cern, the re­cent pos­tur­ing by the Chair­man of CARI­COM, Dr Kei­th Row­ley, im­ply­ing that the vac­ci­na­tions, which are be­ing giv­en to Guyanese, are un­safe. This comes as no sur­prise as Dr Row­ley ful­fils his his­tor­i­cal trait of demon­strat­ing scant re­gard for the lives of Guyanese. We find these ef­forts by the Leader of the Op­po­si­tion of Guyana and the chair­man of CARI­COM to be ut­ter­ly rep­re­hen­si­ble, cal­lous and ir­re­spon­si­ble and con­demn these ef­forts to score cheap po­lit­i­cal points,” the Cham­ber said in a re­lease.

In its re­sponse yes­ter­day, the Min­istry of For­eign and CARI­COM Af­fairs de­fend­ed the Prime Min­is­ter.

The re­lease la­belled Ram­sam­my’s com­ments as mis­lead­ing, dis­re­spect­ful and po­ten­tial­ly dam­ag­ing while call­ing the Cham­ber’s com­ments rep­re­hen­si­ble and slan­der­ous.

“The com­ments and state­ment at­tempt to as­so­ciate Prime Min­is­ter Row­ley with views which he does not hold and which he has nev­er ex­pressed. It is note­wor­thy that in his pub­lished com­men­tary Dr Ram­sam­my could of­fer not one sin­gle quo­ta­tion from the Prime Min­is­ter to sup­port his false al­le­ga­tions, nor did Dr Ram­sam­my of­fer a shred of ev­i­dence to sup­port his mis­lead­ing claims,” the re­lease stat­ed.

It went on to say that at no time did the Prime Min­is­ter dis­par­age Guyana’s vac­cine pro­gramme nor im­ply the vac­cines be­ing used by its CARI­COM neigh­bour were un­safe.

At the press con­fer­ence on June 12, the Prime Min­is­ter made the fol­low­ing state­ment af­ter apol­o­gis­ing to the na­tion for the first-come, first-serve vac­cine fi­as­co.

“The on­ly coun­try in CARI­COM that has re­ceived in­to its bor­ders, more vac­cines than Trinidad and To­ba­go is Guyana. And the rea­son for that, is that Guyana took a de­ci­sion which we did not take, I’ve raised that on this plat­form be­fore but I’ll raise it again, the Guyana Gov­ern­ment took a de­ci­sion that Trinidad and To­ba­go did not take and that was ear­ly in the pro­ceed­ings to use vac­cines that were not ap­proved by the World Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion. As a re­sult of that, Guyana had a larg­er vol­ume of vac­cines avail­able, we did not par­tic­i­pate in that and that ex­plains it.  So if one is look­ing at WHO ap­proved vac­cines, it would be clear that Trinidad and To­ba­go, got with­in its bor­ders, more vac­cines than any oth­er CARI­COM coun­try,” the Prime Min­is­ter said at that time.

Pro­fes­sor of In­ter­na­tion­al Re­la­tions at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Al­ber­ta, Cana­da, Pro­fes­sor Andy Knight told Guardian Me­dia the en­tire ex­change was un­called for.

He al­so said the Prime Min­is­ter’s state­ments about the vac­cines used in Guyana were used with­out the World Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion’s ap­proval was a ‘bit mis­lead­ing.’

“Those vac­cines that Guyana re­ceived ear­ly in the year were made avail­able through a part­ner­ship be­tween the Coali­tion for Epi­dem­ic Pre­pared­ness In­no­va­tions (CEPI), Gavi, the Vac­cine Al­liance, the Pan Amer­i­can Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion/World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion (PA­HO/WHO) and the Unit­ed Na­tions Chil­dren’s Fund (UNICEF). Thus, while tech­ni­cal­ly one can make the case that these vac­cines were not di­rect­ly ap­proved by WHO (most vac­cines around that time were still un­der­go­ing tri­als) the fact is that this first ship­ment of vac­cines to Guyana was de­liv­ered with the bless­ings of PA­HO/WHO,” Knight said.

He said if the Prime Min­is­ter want­ed to make the point that T&T has more vac­cines that have tech­ni­cal­ly ap­proved by the WHO, he could have done so with­out im­ply­ing that Guyana’s larg­er amount of vac­cine was be­cause some of their vac­cine ship­ments were not tech­ni­cal­ly yet on the WHO’s ap­proved list.

“To me this is an un­nec­es­sary ar­gu­ment to make just to prove that ‘we have more WHO-ap­proved vac­cines than the oth­er guy.’ It’s undiplo­mat­ic. It’s un­nec­es­sary. Even the of­fi­cials at WHO would rec­og­nize that back in Jan­u­ary 2021 Guyana did the right thing to pro­cure as many COVID-19 vac­cines as pos­si­ble to try to stop the spread of the pan­dem­ic,” Knight said.

Knight said he hopes the ‘undiplo­mat­ic’ ex­change will not hurt re­la­tions be­tween the two coun­tries.