TRINIDADIAN kidney recipient Germaine Allum said yesterday she was never scared during the 11-hour transplant operation, while her fianc?, Paul Boissiere, also from Trinidad, said he gave away one of his kidneys for love. “What man wouldn’t do that for his wife?” Boissiere told Newsday from the Johns Hopkins Comprehensive Transplant Centre, where he was visiting Allum, a 28-year-old accountant with Ernst and Young. The two are not married but are engaged and have been together for 13 years and live together on Majuba Cross Road, Petit Valley. From the Johns Hopkins Centre, Allum told Newsday yesterday she is doing very well and should be discharged from the Baltimore, Maryland, institution in about three days time. “I’m doing great and everything went smoothly.  Love is a big part of it.  The kidney is working really well,” Allum told Newsday. Allum and her fianc? won’t be back to Trinidad right away though, since she said she has to be constantly monitored.  “I will be on medication for the rest of my life,” she said, adding that she and her fianc? might be back in the country at the end of September.

Allum was one of three people to receive a kidney transplant in what is believed to be the world’s first simultaneous “triple swap” kidney transplant operation done last Monday at Johns Hopkins Centre. The donors were Julia Tower, 57, of Hyattsville; Connie Dick, 41, from Latrobe, Pennsylvania, and Boissiere, who is from Majuba Cross Road, Petit Valley. The recipients in the historic transplant were Allum, Jeremy Weiser-Warschoff, 13, from Silver Spring, and Tracy Stahl, 39, from Jonestown, Pa. To make it possible for Allum, Boissiere donated one of his kidneys to Weiser-Warschoff, whom he only met on Saturday, even though they had been linked for the last five days by the teenager’s newly implanted kidney. Allum told Newsday that she was never scared because she had been through so much before the transplants.  She said she had been admitted to the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) of a Canadian hospital in January for six months.  She said her lungs had collapsed, had two cardiac arrests and she had no muscles left.

After her stay at the Canadian hospital, Allum was flown back to Trinidad where she was forced to use a wheelchair, then graduated to walking sticks. Boissiere, an electrical engineer, badly wanted to assist his fianc? in any way possible, and desperate for assistance, the couple then inquired at Johns Hopkins Centre. However, Boissiere’s blood, Type A, was incompatible with Allum’s Type B blood, but he was willing to donate one of his kidneys to a stranger, in Weiser-Marschoff. “We have been together for so long, and I hope any man would do the same,” Boissiere said.  He was discharged on Monday and said he is doing just fine. Allum’s kidney problems started in 1998, when she found out that both of her kidneys were diseased.  They then failed, shrunk then disappeared.  Since then she has been living on medication, Allum said. Allum said she believes she picked up the kidney problem from her school.  “It is such a coincidence that some students of Holy Name have kidney problems.” She added that none of her family members have a history of kidney problems. Her father-in-law Ashley Boissiere claimed a child at the school had a virus, after which four students ended up with kidney problems.  He said one of them has since died from renal failure. The New York Times reported that the transplants cost about US$92,000 each, but Ashley Boissiere told Newsday that the transplant cost much more than the quoted figure. The elder Boissiere said they were able to raise the money through several fund-raisers organised by various people, whom he thanked.

The Unit Trust Corporation of Trinidad and Tobago is poised this year to pay a whopping $.5 billion to its unit holders, surpassing the $473 million it paid last year. This, to date, will be the biggest pay-out to investors by a financial institution in TT, according to  Unit Trust Chairman, Hubert Alleyne, when he spoke last Thursday in Tobago. He made the disclosure when he addressed the ceremonial sod turning for construction of UTC’s new $14 million Tobago Branch Office in uptown Scarborough. Alleyne, earlier, drew an analogy between Unit Trust and the Tobago House of Assembly (THA), which were established in 1980 and 1981, respectively. While the THA was born out of the clear need to develop a system of internal self-government to express the independent will and desires of the  people of Tobago within the notion of a unitary state of Trinidad and Tobago, he noted, Unit Trust came on stream against the background of a declining national economy which had led to greater recognition of the need to view the people of this country as being more immediately and intimately involved in steering the direction of their individual lives.

“In essence, therefore, the design of each institution is meant to extract from the native intelligence and creativity of our people, a will to determine their own destiny,” the Unit Trust Chairman told his audience. “Whether we speak of the allocation of finite geo-political resources, or the investing of limited personal, financial resources, these two processes helped activate the same essential concepts,” he asserted. Moreover, Alleyne observed that both the UTC, with respect to minimising the risk to its unitholders while maximising the benefits they enjoy, and the THA, in terms of Tobago’s development, must strictly adhere to the “delicate exercise of balancing the use of resources which is critical to achieve a judicious mix of relative safety and profitable returns.” He stressed that “all were well aware that none of this can be achieved if the constituents/clients are not on board with us every step of the way,” he added.

THREE people who were picked up by the police for questioning in connection with the June 30 kidnapping of Darrell Chotoo have been released pending further investigations. The three, whose ages range between 19 and 28, of El Socorro and San Juan, were held by police around 3 am on Thursday in the Barataria and San Juan areas during a combined exercise including officers from the North Eastern and Northern Divisions. It was spearheaded by Ag Snr Supt Waldron Bishop and Insp Coa and carried out by Sgt Abraham, Cpls James, Jacobs and Maharaj of the Arima CID and PCs Frederick and Marsleir. The three were released late Saturday evening, but North Eastern Division detectives said their investigations with the three are far from over.

Police sources said the three men told them that they were in the Caroni area when some people brought Chotoo, whom they claimed was alive. The three men also reportedly told the police that they were not involved in Chotoo’s kidnapping and the suspected murder. Chotoo, 25, became a suspected murder victim based on information police received.  He was snatched by four armed men from his El Socorro, San Juan  home and a ransom of $300,000 was subsequently demanded. However, he was reportedly shot during a struggle with the kidnappers and is believed to have died the same day he was grabbed. Police said they were told that Chotoo had died as a result of the bullet wound to his chest and his body dumped in the Caroni River. However, several searches in the vicinity proved futile.  Police said a helicopter as well as dogs were used in the futile searches. Following the revelation that Chotoo might be dead, police charged two men,  Kasib “Jep” Celestine and Nicholas Smith with kidnapping Chotoo and demanding money by menaces respectively.

 

 

The reigning Chutney Soca Monarch, Heeralal ‘Hero’ Rampartap captured yet another crown for 2003. Once more he emerged winner of the National Chutney Foundation of TT’s (NCFTT) monarch competition last Saturday evening at the Centre of Excellence, Macoya, winning the top prize of $100,000. Heeralal who is also the NCFTT 2002 reigning monarch, thrilled the audience with his traditional Chutney tune, “Tap Tap Jhulaana” and his social commentary tune, “Rise Up Children Rise Up.” Also, in winners’ row were: Rakesh Yankaran who placed 2nd, Mohip Poonwassie was 3rd, Boodram Holass placed 4th and Drupatie Ramgoonai, 5th. His Excellency, President George Maxwell Richards, declared the  competition opened at 8.30 pm. In his speech to the estimated 7,000 people present at the competition, he said that Chutney is another of our emerging art forms that reminds us of the plural society that is Trinidad and Tobago. “Chutney can help us to define ourselves, if we permit. We may be able to recognise that which is peculiarly our own as distinct from what belongs to the Hawaiian Islands or Tahiti for example,” he said. He complimented the late Moean Mohammed for his contribution to the development of East Indian culture in TT.

“He blazed the trail and others have followed. We owe it to his memory, therefore, to keep alive the trust and add impetus as necessary, as we continue to craft a tapestry that displays the many facets of our cultural styles,” he said. President Richard was accompanied by his wife Dr Jean Richards. They both enjoyed the first half of the competition before taking leave.  Also present was Minister of Culture, Pennelope Beckles. Another notable performance was that of the reigning Pichakaree Champion, Poonwassie who came out with a knife stuck to his back. He impersonated opposition leader Basdeo Panday in his political commentary entitled, “Never Miss The Water Till The Well Run Dry.” Poonwassie sang about the political cloud when Ramesh Lawrence Maharaj, Ralph Maraj and Trevor Sudama left the UNC while Basdeo Panday was Prime Minister. The foreign performers Bindu of India and Artical Dan of New York failed to impress the audience. Results of the competition were announced at 4.30 am yesterday.

IDENTIFICATION Cards (ID) with a difference will soon be provided in Trinidad and Tobago. The Elections and Boundaries Commission, in making the announcement said the new-look cards will have a much cleaner look with a sharper picture and signature or thumb-print and the Trinidad and Tobago Coat of Arms in full colour. Towards this end, the EBC has embarked on a major upgrade to its systems for producing the ID Cards. It said when the upgrade is completed, the public can look forward to faster delivery of the Cards, as the new system will significantly speed up the preparation process which now takes approximately two months. The upgrade involves replacement of the existing computer equipment as well as the expansion of the image capture and quality control functions.

Ten persons are currently being trained in the system. According to the EBC, the end result will be improved reliability and more secured data, and the versatility of the software will allow for back-up use, if necessary. The solutions are being provided by De La Rue Global Services of Hampshire, England, with hardware supplied by IBM. The EBC said while the new system is expected to be ready for user-testing in early August, the public will not see any immediate change in delivery time for ID Cards, because the upgrading activity has resulted in a backlog which has to be cleared. Also, the EBC would need time to transfer data onto the new system. It is reckoned that the exercise will be completed in December, with the new ID Card system being fully operational in January 2004.

EREMY Weiser-Warschoff, 13, met Paul Boissiere, a soft spoken 30-year-old electrical engineer from Trinidad, for the first time Saturday, even though they had been linked for the last five days by Jeremy’s newly implanted kidney, which Paul had donated, the New York Times reported. The web of connection had actually been a lot more complicated than that.  In return for Mr Boissiere’s kidney, a friend of Jeremy’s family donated a kidney to Tracey Stahl, a very ill mother of two from Johnston, Pa.  And Mrs Stahl’s sister, Connie Dick of Latrobe, Pa, gave her kidney to Boissiere’s seriously ailing fianc?, Germaine Allum, who is also from Trinidad. The triple-swap kidney transplant operation was announced in a news conference Satur-day at Johns Hop-kins Comprehensive Trans-plant Centre, which said it believed that this was the first time three simultaneous kidney transplants have been performed. Other transplant experts, the New York Times reported, said they had not heard of another three-way exchange in the nation.

Months in the making, the exchange was the only way all three recipients could have received a kidney, the lead surgeon, Dr Robert A Montgomery, said, because of tissue, blood antibody incompatibilities among the donors and their originally designated recipients. Many patients arrived at the Baltimore centre only to discover that a person who is willing to donate a kidney is not suitable, Johns Hopkins has found.  With 55,000 people on the national waiting list for a kidney, the United Network for Organ Sharing said, and only about 25 percent a year likely to get a transplant, John Hopkins said it was trying to explore novel ways of matching organ donors and recipients. Dr Montgomery, who directs the Johns Hopkins incompatible-transplant programme, said the centre has created a “matchmaker system that attempts to pair all of our incompatible donors and recipients.”  A former patient contributed money to cover the salary of a coordinator, who identifies the matches, he said. Of the possibility of death for donors, Dr Stephen T Bartlett of the University of Maryland said: “The risk is about 3 in 10,000. The chances of dying are low, but real and present.”  Other dangers include excess bleeding, blood clots to the lung and missed injuries to the bowel. Mrs Stahl, a 38-year-old waitress, was the centerpiece of the swap that was announced Saturday.  She had been suffering with progressive kidney failure for five years, but she had developed too many harmful antibodies, or blood proteins, from pregnancies and blood transfusions to be a match with her sister, even though they shared the same blood type, B.

Mrs Stahl had five plasmapheresis treatments, where the patient’s blood filtered until free of the antibodies that reject a donor kidney. Even so, when the sisters turned to Johns Hopkins, they found that a kidney donated by Mrs Dick would almost certainly be attacked and destroyed by Mrs Stahl’s antibodies. “But in a stroke of good luck,” Dr Mont-gomery said, Jeremy’s friend, Julia Tower of Hyattsville, Md, had a compatible tissue and blood type for Mrs Stahl. Ms Tower had known Jeremy since childhood, and had become closer to him last fall during a hiking trip with him and his parents, Linda Warschoff and Ellen Weiser of Silver Spring, Md.  At her age, she turned 57 on Thursday, Ms Tower said she thougt carefully about whether she wanted to donate a kidney, then “I told them in March I was willing.” Ms Tower has Type O Blood, the universal donor type, which should have been a good match for Jeremy, whose blood is Type A.  But she was not a good tissue match because similarities with Je-remy’s previous donor, his biological mother, who donated her kidney when he was 17 months old.  
That kidney was failing, and Ms Weiser’s kidney was not compatible because she had once been exposed to Hepatitis B.

That’s where Paul Boissiere stepped in.  His blood, Type A, was incompatible with his fiancee’s Type B blood, but he was willing to donate to a stranger.  When they inquired at Johns Hopkins, Ms Allum, 28, had been hospitalisd for several months in Coral Gables, Fla, and her heart had stopped twice, so they were desperate. The transplant operations which the New York Times said, cost US$92,000 each, were performed last Monday by three surgical teams, who worked from 7 am to 6 pm, Dr Mont-gomery said: “From the time she was diagnosed with kidney problems,” Bois-siere said of Allum, an accountant with the Ernst & Young firm’s branch, “I wanted to give her a kidney.” For her part, Allum, who has dated Boissiere for 13 years, smiled and said her friends had noted: And you don’t even have him tied down.”     
              
        

Police have held a 34-year-old labourer as a suspect in the murder of  a 41-year-old woman whose throat was slit Saturday evening. The suspect was held by police near his Buen Intento Village, Princes Town home yesterday afternoon. Juliet Victoria Cummings, a mother of four, was attacked by a man inside a maxi taxi in Princes Town around 7 pm on Saturday. Quick action by Homicide Division (Southern branch) police officers resulted in the arrest of the 34-year-old labourer. Up to late yesterday the man was being interrogated by detectives after he was arrested around noon in some bushes near the house where he lived. According to  police reports, it was around 7 pm  when Cummings, of Monkey Town Third Branch Road, New Grant boarded a maxi taxi at Nipdec car park, High Street, Princes Town. She was on her way to her home after working as a baby sitter in San Fernando. Cummings had taken her seat in the maxi when, according to police reports, the man followed her into the vehicle. Police said that while passengers were boarding the maxi, an argument broke out between the man and Cummings. The man whipped out a knife and began stabbing the woman. He then allegedly dragged the bleeding woman out of the maxi.

Passengers and members of the public looked on in horror as the man, according to the report, slit the woman’s  throat. Then in full view of onlookers, the man who at the time was holding the woman’s neck when he slit her throat, pushed her to the ground. She fell at the back of the maxi. Onlookers screamed as the man, according to the report,  fled the scene holding the blood-stained knife. The woman lay on the ground bleeding. She was pronounced dead on arrival at the San Fernando General Hospital. When Newsday visited Cummings’ home yesterday at Monkey Town, her mother, Eileen Mendoza, was too distraught to speak to the media. Cummings lived with her four children, Phicilla Cummings,13, Lorenzo Marcellin, 12, Wayne Marcellin, 10 and Selena Marcellin, eight. The suspect held  lived at Buen Intento Village about two miles away from where the woman was attacked. Cummings’ elder sister, Anacletus Silverthorn described her sister as a “quiet, humble person.” She said her sister  had been the victim of 14 terror-stricken years of verbal and physical abuse. And, with tears in her eyes, Silverthorn described the agony of seeing her sister’s lifeless body lying in a pool of blood in the middle of the car park. “She was too decent a person to end up like that,” Silverthorn sobbed. She said that Cummings, who had separated from her first husband recently, was trying to secure a “comfortable life for her four children.” Police confirmed that Cummings had recently taken out a restraining order in the magistrate’s court against a male relative. Silverthorn  said the family would now have to care for Cummings’ children. A post mortem will be conducted on the body today after which police are expected to charge the man with murder. He will appear in the Princes Town Magistrate’s court.

The exuberant and high-flying National Ballet of Senegal, with an electrifying spectacle of music and dance, held a capacity audience spellbound at the Grand Stand, Queen’s Park Savannah, Port-of-Spain, last Saturday evening. A presentation of the Emancipation Support Committee, the programme at the Lidj Yasu Omowale Village was a fitting climax to its 2003 Emancipation celebrations. It attracted thousands of patrons of all ethnic groups and ages, all of whom showed true appreciation for the colourful spectacle. The premier traditional dance company of West Africa and veterans of 22 sold-out North American performances, the well-travelled company offered a magnificent adventure in total theatre. The work was characterised by high-energy choreography that soared above the stage, performed by dancers with unmatched physical gifts and discipline. An ensemble of drums and traditional instruments provided infectious musical accompaniment, the combined effect adding up to a kinetically explosive performance that transported the appreciative audience all the way across the continent to Senegal.

An international review of the company’s performance once referred to it as “a barefoot extravaganza, a celebratory maelstrom of stomping feet and percussive brilliance,”  while another raved: “A typical performance by this group can unstuff the stuffiest shirt. These ebullient dancers and musicians have dazzled thousands, presenting the traditional movement and music of their country in the most direct and heartfelt fashion imaginable.” In a buoyant show of accomplished singing, dancing and musical interludes, the programme was presented in two movements. The first brought the opening segment to a close and the other formed the basis of the second segment. It was learne that in order to create it and preserve their West African cultural heritage, members of the troupe travelled throughout their country learning the music and dances of Senegal’s fifteen diverse ethnic groups. The group’s stellar musicians performed on several traditional instruments including the tama or talking drum and the kora, a harp-like instrument with 21-strings and a resonating gourd. Founded in 1960 by poet and statesman Leopold Senghor, the first president of Senegal, the National Ballet of Senegal has presented and preserved the best of West African culture for over forty years. It is said that to become part of this esteemed company is the dream of the finest young dancers and singers of Senegal. Its works are meticulously choreographed, yet they are performed with spontaneity and a clear love of dance.

Supporting acts on the playbill were Jeune Agapes Choir under the direction of Lois Lewis and the Pamberi Steel Orchestra with guest performer, saxophonist Dawud Orr. Jeunes Agape opened with an interestingly innovative rendition of the national anthem, and later in the programme would earn loud cheers for its well-choreographed dance movements (as well as its vocal harmony) showcased in other offerings that included the late Merchant’s (Dennis Williams) well-loved composition, “Umbayayao.” Pamberi found itself the victim of a sound system that employed less than acceptable speakers for the purpose and insufficient and improper “miking” of the orchestra. The result was a discordant sound that robbed of impact the band’s obviously well rehearsed and prepared six-song repertoire. It should be mentioned here that show hosts of concerts of this kind ought to let the audience know the names of selections the artistes have chosen to perform, and never assume that patrons would be able to recognise all the choices. Show host on the occasion was Dara Healy.