St Kitts-Nevis health minister confirms monkeys and humans use same MRI machine at Research Foundation

St Kitts and Nevis’ Minister of Health Hon Eugene Hamilton has confirmed that monkeys and human beings are using the same MRI machine at the St Kitts Biomedical Research Foundation, also known as The Monkey Farm.

“The monkeys that are being scanned there are 98 percent genetically compatible to you and I. There is only two percent difference genetically between the monkeys and humans, the monkeys that are in St Kitts anyway, the green vervet,” said Hamilton, the health minister in the Timothy Harris-led Team Unity Government which allowed the MRI machine to be installed at Lower Bourryeau Estate, several miles out of Basseterre, instead at the J N France General Hospital in the capital.

Hamilton was responding to a question during a government-sponsored town hall meeting Tuesday night.

“What is happening there with monkeys being scanned and humans being scanned does not create danger whatsoever to human beings. It is just pure politics,” said Hamilton. Dr Terrance Drew, the St Kitts-Nevis Labour Party (SKNLP) lead spokesman on health issues has repeatedly accused the Team Unity Government of using healthcare in St. Kitts and Nevis as a business by the family of Prime Minister Timothy Harris and profit is placed above service and care.

Dr. Drew has been critical of the installation of the MRI equipment at the primate research facility managed by Alexis Nisbett, a nephew of Prime Minister Harris. Nisbett is also chairman of the Board of Directors of the St Kitts-Nevis-Anguilla National Bank, in which the government is the majority shareholder. Nisbett’s wife, Hon Akilah Nisbett is Deputy Political Leader of Harris’ Peoples Labour Party (PLP) and Deputy Speaker in the National Assembly.

A news release from the Office of Prime Minister Harris in 2018 boasted that over 450 persons used the facility in 2017 with charges ranging from EC$950 to EC$2239 per procedure, collecting over EC$1 million.

Dr. Drew said the MRI facility should have been installed at the J N France General Hospital and informed that a privately-owned CT-scan machine was recently installed at the hospital, also owned by the Prime Minister’s nephew when the existing one could have been upgraded.