Former principal medical officer of the Ministry of Health Dr Eugene Laurent will be cremated after a funeral service at Belgroves Memorial Centre, Trincity, this morning. Laurent died on March 1. He was a member of the Environment Commission. In 1985 Laurent was appointed chairman of a committee to organise a Pan American Health Organisation (PAHO)-sponsored National Consultation on Environmental Health and Protection.
Its major recommendation was that there was urgent need to establish an Environmental Management Agency to ensure sustainable development in T&T. On January 31 he celebrated his 80th birthday and posted this status on his Facebook page: “Today, January 31, 2014, I have become a penultimate octogenarian. Thanks to the dozens of friends and friends’ friends who have sent good wishes. “Today, I am borrowing this BIG WORD ‘penultimate’ to let you, my friends, know that this will be the penultimate anecdote that I will write about our life and our kind of love.”