Tweet

---

Kingstown, St. Vincent — September 12, 2025: While St. Vincent and the Grenadines is proudly celebrating the handover of five brand-new, state-of-the-art ambulances, the people of St. Kitts and Nevis are left fuming over the stark contrast in their own healthcare reality — forced to make do with 13-year-old, second-hand ambulances imported like scraps from a junkyard.

At a formal ceremony yesterday, SVG’s Minister of Health, Wellness and the Environment, St. Clair Prince, along with Caribbean Development Bank officials, unveiled the gleaming new fleet. The ambulances were secured through a partnership between the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), the CDB, and the SVG government. Two will serve the Grenadines, while three remain stationed on the mainland. Health officials in SVG hailed the acquisition as a “critical boost” to their emergency response capacity, modernizing the fleet to meet today’s health challenges.

Meanwhile, across the waters in St. Kitts and Nevis, citizens continue to shake their heads in disbelief and outrage. Their Ministry of Health, under the Drew Administration, recently unveiled ambulances already more than a decade old, dressed up and paraded as “new” but in truth recycled second-hand vehicles from abroad.

The optics are embarrassing:

• SVG steps forward with modern, brand-new emergency vehicles.
• SKN steps backward, settling for foreign hand-me-downs.

The scathing comparison underscores the administration’s continued failure to prioritize healthcare infrastructure. For a government that boasts of a “Sustainable Island State Agenda,” the reliance on outdated ambulances that should have long been retired is nothing short of an insult to the people.

Observers point out that the Drew-led Ministry of Health seems content with window dressing and public relations gimmicks, rather than genuine investment in first-class emergency response tools. The irony deepens when smaller and less economically robust nations like St. Vincent and the Grenadines can secure top-of-the-line vehicles, while St. Kitts and Nevis, despite years of promises, still leaves its people reliant on the charity of used imports.

SVG’s health planners spoke confidently about renovating health centers, building new facilities, and strengthening resilience. In SKN, however, residents wonder if their government even has a plan beyond “patch and pretend.”

Once again, St. Kitts and Nevis has been left exposed — a country whose leaders tout “modernization” while delivering yesterday’s leftovers.

The question Kittitians and Nevisians are now loudly asking is simple:
If St. Vincent can get brand-new ambulances, why can’t we?

---