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Nichole George and her son Daveon Webster at their Buccoo, Tobago home – PHOTO BY KINNESHA GEORGE-HARRY

DAVEON Webster wants to walk again.

The 22-year-old Buccoo man was left paralysed from his waist down when he hit his head while diving into the sea close to his home five years ago. He was then 16 years old and a student of the Scarborough Secondary School.

Speaking with Newsday on Thursday last week, Webster recalled what happened on April 15, 2017.

“I dove off the jetty right here in Buccoo and I ended up hitting the bottom – the sand.

“I was liming with my friends – it was the Saturday before Easter and there was this party. I was going to get the boat to carry some people on a reef tour. I ran first then dove off the jetty.”

Webster said he remembers hitting his head first.

“When I landed, immediately my whole body shutdown. So my legs pulled together and so did my arms. My entire body was laying at the attention position. I couldn’t move any part.

“I remember saying ‘Lord Father, just bring me back, I don’t want to die.’

“I kept on praying, and all this time I was holding my breath because this was happening under the water.”

Doctors later explained to him that a bone slipped out of his vertebrae.

“It squeezed my spinal cord, so that affected the movement from my waist down.”

He now uses a wheelchair to move around.

Webster said his dreams of joining the coast guard came crashing down in that one moment.

“I didn’t get to finish high school or even graduate – my education was placed on a pause. I am definitely interested in continuing my education soon.”

He said he tries to have a positive outlook on life.

“There are aches and pains a lot, but I don’t study it. I pay no mind to those pains. I try to be strong most times.”

His mother Nichole George told Newsday she wasn’t at home when the incident happened. She said Webster sought her permission prior to her leaving home.

George said she received a frightening phone call while on the road. It was her mother telling her to return home right away.

“She (my mother) said Daveon was on the jetty unresponsive. When I got there, the more I tried to walk faster, it was the slower I was going. There were a lot of persons at the jetty surrounding him. So, from the distance, I shouted his name and he responded. At that moment I thanked God.”

Webster was airlifted to the Port of Spain General Hospital that evening, accompanied by his father Dave.

George said life for her and her family has changed drastically.

“I remember seeing him warded and he was the life of the entire ward. This was something really hard, to see him in this position, yet he had so much faith and that is what is carrying me through. Had he been in low spirit, I would have been low as well but he has always had a very high spirit. Even in his sad moments, if he has to cry he will and say what he has to say, but he moves along quickly. He has hope that he would walk again.”

She said since the accident they have tried numerous specialists locally.

“But I think now is the time for us to see if we can get him out of the country to do additional recovery treatments.

“His recovery is sure but slow and, with an open mind, we’re going into this thinking he would walk again. He would not be able to walk strong one time, but the therapy would assist him greatly.”

George firmly believes that with the right specialists, surgery, and comprehensive treatment, Webster can return to the once active son she knows he can be.

“We have been in contact with NeuroFit 360 in Pembroke Pines, Florida. So when he goes up first, they would assess him because I sent all the documents already. They would do all their routine checks, and then he would be able to start physiotherapy because they said that is what he needs. If he needs anything additional, we will go from there. But starting the physiotherapy is very important.”

The cost of the procedures are US$155 per session, five days a week for approximately three months.

To help with this, the family has set up a GoFundMe account to receive donations from the public. As at Friday afternoon, they had raised US$1,139 of the US9,300 goal from 25 donors.

The family will also soon establish a collections account with a bank.

Anyone wishing to donate can do so via the fundraising page https://gofund.me/197b92a7, or by calling George at 753-8837.

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Prime Minister Andrew Holness says a level of pessimism has engulfed the country, despite the Government managing to grow the economy amid exogenous shocks caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and geopolitical tensions in Europe.

“If you are feeling a greater sense of pessimism, negativism, an unexplainable sense of depression, it is as a result of this shock. (If you are feeling) A change in your routine, which has shifted your outlook on life, it is as a result of these shocks,” Holness opined.

He was speaking on Friday in Westmoreland to thousands of young persons who are participating in the Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development’s Youth Summer Employment Programme (YSEP).

In noting that the shocks have left Jamaicans experiencing rising food and fuel prices, Holness said Jamaicans cannot continue to have the ‘nutten nah gwaan’ mindset.

He pointed to recent social media comments by Jamaicans on his social media pages when he highlighted the visit of Saudi Arabian investors to the country, as examples of that mindset.

“Under one of the comments, ‘Saudi investment can’t nyam!’… It is the truth. It is a reality, but it shows the level of pessimism in the society,” Holness shared.

“I left that event and went to launch a very important initiative to bring electric mobility to Jamaica, and the electric motor vehicle policy… The comments under the event was: ‘Wrong focus! That’s not priority! Mi can’t afford the car!’

“… And I understand, and, yes, you may not be able to afford the cars, but you know what, it is not the first time Jamaica has had exogenous shocks to deal with,” Holness insisted.

He said Jamaica is dealing with the latest shocks differently, resulting in continued growth.

“In fact, we have been dealing with it (the present shocks and crises) much differently, and that is why we continue to recover much faster than other countries in this region,” Holness asserted.

“We had shocks in the 70s – oil prices and commodity shocks. We had shocks in the 80s. We had financial shocks in the 90s. In the 2000s, we had a massive recession, and it took us 10 years to recover.

“This is the first time we are having a shock – two shocks – and we can report growth. Growth!” he stressed.

“We are having a shock from the fallout of the pandemic and from the war in Ukraine. Things that the Government has nothing to do with, yet we can report the lowest level unemployment rate in the history of this country,” he added.

According to Holness, the Government is focused on “development and growth strategies and policies”, rather than spending to result in debt.

“There are those who are saying to us, ‘Forget about spending and building for the future. Tek five per cent or two per cent of your GDP and just spend it.’ We have done that before. We have ended up spending money that we don’t have, and as a result of shock(s), we end up in debt,” he stated.

The prime minister suggested that the very young persons being engaged in the YSEP programme are the ones who will continue to repay the debts that are occurred over the years.

To that end, he said citizens must continue to “ride out this period of exogenous shocks to our economy”.

He also advised the students that, “When yuh go out in the market and yuh hear people say, ‘Nutten nah gwaan and Government nuh care, run dem with that argument!’

“The best way to show you care is to manage the economy well so that the country doesn’t collapse and we end up like other countries you see in the world,” he insisted.

“We are a Government that cares, because in the middle of a crisis we are able to continue with programmes like these to get our young people targeted interventions for employment so that some resources can get in your hands, but the country gets some benefit as well,” stated Holness.

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Image courtesy CDC.

TWO more people have died of covid19, said the Ministry of Health in its daily update on Friday, while 220 more were infected from Wednesday-Thursday.

The dead are one elderly male and one middle aged male. Both had multiple comorbidities. These included diabetes, hypertension, kidney disease and cancer.

Trinidad and Tobago now has 6,221 active cases.

Since the virus reached TT in March 2020, some 4,036 people have died. Of these, 3,345 were not fully vaccinated, 298 were fully vaccinated, and 390 deaths occurred before May 24, 2021 when vaccination began.

Of all covid19 patients between July 22, 2021 and July 13, some 15,724 (80.59 per cent) were not fully vaccinated; 3,804 (19.5 per cent) per cent were fully vaccinated.

During the pandemic, 169,028 patients have tested positive, of whom 158,771 recovered.

At present, 6,127 are in home self-isolation, 94 in hospital and none in step-down facilities.

To date, 782,398 people have been tested, of whom 327,668 were tested at private facilities and 454,730 at public facilities.

Of TT’s population, 51.1 per cent are now fully vaccinated, namely 714,832 people, compared to 685,168 who have had no doses or just a first dose.

Of those people who are fully vaccinated, some 657,195 had the second dose of a two-dose regime and 57,637 a single-dose regime. Some 694,141 people have had the first of a two-dose regime. Some 166,774 have had a booster dose.

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Prime Minister Philip J. Pierre, declaring that the time for ‘political games’ is over, plans to forge ahead with plans to invite various stakeholders to come up with solutions to the current economic challenges facing Saint Lucia as a result of the present global crisis.

Opposition leader Allen Chastanet this week rejected the invitation, asserting that the Prime Minister had ridiculed solutions offered in the past and had no interest in working with the opposition United Workers Party (UWP).

“Next week I will be writing the civil partners, I will be writing all the NGOs, the trade unions and the opposition although I understood that before they got the letter they objected. So they answered my letter before I wrote it. But what do you expect? But I will still write them,” Pierre, responsible for Finance, stated.

The Castries East MP was addressing a signing ceremony on Friday for the FLOW ‘Home Communications Relief Bundle’ for internet services to the less fortunate.

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“I am going to write the opposition because there are people who supported the opposition. These people are Saint Lucians and they benefit from the FLOW bundle and they benefit from the facility fees and their children benefit from the one laptop programme and they too do not pay VAT on electricity,” Pierre said.He told his audience that the opposition is responsible for doing what the people elected them to do.

“I am going to write them because I want to have a joint approach to the problems in this country especially now, because what we are going through now is not our fault,” Pierre explained.

“There are some of the things that are our fault – some of the things we inherited,” the Prime Minister said.

Pierre, whose Saint Lucia Labour Party (SLP) surged to power in a landslide after the July 26, 2021, general elections, said some of the inherited things were ‘terrible.’

He said now is not the time for one-upmanship and political games because the country is facing tough times.

“The time to play games is over, just like the elections are over,” Pierre pointed out.

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