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Press Release (19^th October, 2016)–Sir Kutayba Alghanim, the Federation’s Consul General in New York, has made a personal donation of US$50,000 to the Ministry of Health for the establishment of an Oncology Unit in St. Kitts and Nevis.

Sir Kutayba’s steadfast commitment to St. Kitts and Nevis and his work on behalf of the Federation go back several decades.  After becoming a citizen of St. Kitts and Nevis, he was instrumental in the opening of the St. Kitts and Nevis’ Permanent Mission to the United Nations immediately after independence, where he served as a diplomat with the rank of Minister Counsellor for Economic Affairs.

Throughout the 90s, he actively pursued economic partnership initiatives for the Federation and also facilitated assistance programmes from the Government of Kuwait, through the Kuwaiti Fund for Technical Cooperation, in infrastructural development from which both islands benefitted in the areas of water infrastructure, roads and the airport on Nevis.  In 1998, through his collaboration with the then Charge d’Affaires, Mr Kevin M. Isaac, at our United Nations Permanent Mission in New York, they collaborated with senior hospital executives from 12 New York area hospitals, such as Columbia-Presbyterian, New York University Hospital to explore options for assisting St. Kitts-Nevis develop partnerships that would grant access to high quality care to citizens from our Federation.

“Having learned of High Commissioner Isaac’s ongoing collaboration with the Ministry of Health on non-communicable diseases (NCDs), I was enthused with the opportunity to renew our longstanding strategic partnership,” Sir Kutayba explained. “I salute the important, timely and substantive efforts of the Minister of Health, the Honourable Eugene Hamilton, his colleague Minister, the Honourable Wendy Phipps, and their team, as well as High Commissioner Isaac.  I very much look forward to continuing our partnership to support Government’s efforts to improve the national healthcare infrastructure of the islands,” the Consul General concluded.

Additionally, in 2014, working with High Commissioner Isaac, Sir Kutayba Alghanim sponsored the High Commission initiative to host in St. Kitts a seminar for the Federation’s diplomats and frontline civil service staff on “Diplomacy and Economic Resilience.” This seminar benefitted from the participation of experts from Harvard University in the USA; Birmingham and Sterling Universities in the UK; the Washington DC based Organisation of American States, as well as regional diplomats and international business partners.

In support of the initiative, Minister of Foreign Affairs, the Honourable Mark Brantley thanked High Commissioner Isaac “for his continued efforts to make sure that at a time when traditional sources of funding have become scare that he continues to explore partnership as a way of meeting the needs of our people and fulfilling the government’s prosperity and empowerment agenda.”