St Kitts prime minister confirms a vertebral artery stroke and starts Florida rehab

St Kitts and Nevis Prime Minister Dr Terrance Drew said on Sunday that the illness that took him off the island last month was a stroke caused by a dissection of a vertebral artery. Drew is 49 and a physician. He recorded an eight-minute address from a rehabilitation centre in Florida and said he can move all his limbs, speak clearly, and that his thinking and coordination are intact.

The timeline he and Caribbean media have given is this. He was admitted to Joseph N. France General Hospital in Basseterre on 30 August with nausea, dizziness and balance problems. He was then treated in Martinique. On 2 September he was flown to Florida for further tests. After the vertebral artery finding he was discharged from the Florida hospital and moved into occupational and physical therapy.

A vertebral artery dissection is a tear in a vessel that feeds the back of the brain and the brainstem. It can cause a stroke in people far younger than the usual stroke age. Drew said the limits on his body have been controlled and that rehab is going better than the diagnosis might suggest. He thanked medical staff and the public for prayers. He said he expects to return to the federation.

The political gap is already two weeks and counting. St Kitts and Nevis is a small cabinet. Drew leads Labour. Acting arrangements inside Basseterre have not been spelled out in the Sunday broadcast. CARICOM partners will treat the tape as reassurance. Investors and the opposition will treat the return date as the fact that matters.

Joseph N. France is the main public hospital on St Kitts. The decision to move him first to Martinique and then to Florida is the usual path when a small island needs imaging and vascular care it does not keep on island. Drew naming the vessel and the mechanism is more detail than most Caribbean leaders give about their own bodies. That is useful for rumours. It is not a medical discharge note.

The next public marker is whether he appears on a video call with his cabinet this week or waits until he can fly. A 49-year-old prime minister with a treated vertebral dissection can recover well. He can also be told not to fly or to keep a light load. Until he is back in Basseterre the country is being run around an empty chair and a Florida rehab timetable.

Drew closed by saying he is doing better mentally and physically than the ailment would suggest. That sentence is for the electorate. The sentence for the cabinet is the one he did not give: the date he will sit at the table again.