President David Granger returned to Guyana last evening after completing his regime of radiation therapy in Cuba and he has been advised against trying to manage a heavy workload immediately.
Since April 2nd, Granger had been in Cuba undergoing treatment at the Centro de Investigaciones Médico Quirúrgicas for Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma.
In a statement issued by the Ministry of the Presidency, Guyana’s Ambassador to Cuba Halim Majeed announced that Granger had completed the radiation therapy yesterday.
“There has been no complication in this cycle of treatment and his medical specialists are looking forward to his recovery and his return to normalcy,” he said.
It was noted that the president will continue a schedule of medication prescribed by his doctors and is expected to return to Cuba at a time to be determined by his Cuban medical team.
“In terms of his resumption of official duties, they have cautioned against too heavy a work load immediately and have advised that care must be taken in pursuing excessive public engagements at this time,” the ambassador added.
According to the statement, President Granger has reiterated his gratitude to Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel, First Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba Raul Castro, First Vice-President of Cuba Salvador Valdes Mesa, Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez Parrilla, Cuban Ambassador in Guyana Narciso Reinaldo Socorro, the medical team at Centro de Investigaciones Médico Quirúrgicas, the CARICOM Caucus in Cuba, and the many colleagues, friends and well-wishers who have extended best wishes for his full recovery and have prayed for his return to good health and physical well-being.
In his previous update last weekend, Majeed noted that President Granger had been keeping an active schedule in Havana.
In the updates released yesterday, he noted that on April 6th, President Granger received the President of Ghana Nana Akufo-Addo, who was on a four-day state visit to Cuba at that time. Majeed said the two presidents discussed economic and cultural cooperation and agreed that relations between the two states should be deepened. As a result, a Ghanaian delegation is expected to visit Guyana later this year.
President Akufo-Addo was accompanied at his meeting with President Granger by Kwaku Agyemang-Manu, Minister of Health, Matthew Opoku Prempeh, Minister of Education, and Napoleon Abdulai, Ghana’s Ambassador to Cuba.
It was also noted that President Granger met with Cuban Minister of Foreign Affairs Bruno Rodriguez Parrilla last Thursday in the fourth such engagement since the president has been undergoing medical treatment and evaluation in Cuba.
President Granger was congratulated by the minister on the state of his physical well-being and the completion of the cycles of chemotherapy and radiotherapy.
The statement said they also reviewed President Granger’s visit to the Cuban National Zoological Park, the Botanic Garden of the University of Havana and the Escuela Taller de la Habana in Old Havana. “They agreed that those first-hand engagements were extremely valuable and that they opened additional avenues of cooperation between Guyana and Cuba,” it said.
“They agreed further that arrangements should be made through diplomatic channels for a Cuban technical team to travel to Guyana to engage their counterparts and to consider the possibility of collecting and cataloging
specimens of Guyana’s flora and fauna,” it added.
According to Majeed, President Granger explained to the Foreign Minister that he was impressed with the skills training at Escuela Taller, especially in the areas of conservation and restoration of public and national buildings. It was noted that they agreed that the possibility of the transfer of technology which could be used in the restoration of Guyana’s wooden buildings should be pursued at the diplomatic level.
The statement said the matter of tourism, including multi-destination tourism, was also discussed and there was concurrence that this was another area for further cooperation between Guyana and Cuba which should be taken up through the usual diplomatic channels.
