As the New Patriotic Party (NPP) government continues a fidgety charade over Vice President Mahamudu Bawumia’s ongoing health scare, The Republic has picked up that the malady that prompted a request for prayers for him is a crisis.
Dr. Bawumia suffered a stroke that had started as pulmonary embolism [ads1]on the fateful Friday that he was rushed to a local hospital for emergency attention, sources reveal.
According to the same sources, the embolism had been brought on by food poisoning.
The NPP government has attempted to water down its own earlier distress call for prayers for the Vice President, claiming that he only suffered stress.
But as the government tiptoes round the truth, The Republic understands that Dr. Bawumia is paralyzed from the stroke.
The Vice President will remain indisposed for some time and will need time to recover from the stroke, sources say.
This revelation means that the NPP government had been lying when it claimed that Dr. Bawumia had only suffered stress and had since recovered. The stress claim had been a dramatic u-turn from an SOS that the government had earlier sent Ghanaians asking for prayers for the Vice President.
Pulmonary embolism is a type of thrombosis (deep vein blood clot) that happens in the arteries of the lungs. Thrombosis themselves are agents of stroke when they happen in vessels that channel blood to the brain.
According to sources, the health scare had begun when the Vice President had accompanied a Council of State member (name withheld) to the funeral of deceased relative of that state elder. At that funeral, he had eaten.
Not too long after he had eaten, people around him are said to have observed that his reflexes had dulled, as he, at a point, only nodded sluggishly when he was spoken to.
From the funeral, Dr. Bawumia had been driven home, but had been invited to the Flagstaff House where he had eaten supper before finally making it home.
By the time he got home, he was full and so without touching his home made dinner, he took a shower and retired to bed. It was not too long after this that trouble struck.
It is said that the symptoms had started in the form of sudden choky feeling which had brought on retching. The shortness of breath soon degenerated into chest pains and deep cough which produced bloody sputum.
By this time, there was the need to rush him to a hospital for emergency attention and so he was conveyed to a car and driven off. By the time he got to the hospital for emergency attention, he had suffered a cardiac arrest, sources say.
Apparently, it was at this stage that the NPP government issued a statement asking for prayers for the Vice President.
Dr. Bawumia’s doctors however managed to stabilize him and then did an MRI that revealed that something had been lodged in his lung – indicating pulmonary embolism.
Upon this realization the local doctors are said to have administered anti-coagulants and then recommended further treatment abroad. It is not clear if the further treatment recommended included surgery.
But sources say that it was after he had been discharged from the hospital that he developed a stroke while preparations were being made to fly him abroad. The Vice President consequently suffered a stroke induced paralysis, it is alleged.
The same sources also allege that medical investigations in London revealed that he had suffered a ricin poisoning. Ricin is a highly toxic, naturally occurring lectin (a carbohydrate-binding protein) produced in the seeds of the castor oil plant, Ricinus communis.
A dose of purified ricin powder the size of a few grains of table salt can kill an adult human, according to Wikipedia.
While Dr. Bawumia is on admission in the UK, the NPP government has parried off all enquiries about the state of health of the Vice President using every obscurantist antic it can muster. Among others, the government has claimed that he only suffered mild stress induced fatigue, but the fact that he has had to be flown to a specialist hospital in the UK for treatment has rendered this explanation unbelievable.
Besides, it was the NPP government which had released a statement in the first place announcing the sudden ill health of the Vice President while calling for urgent prayers for him.
The same government has since claimed that Dr. Bawumia has fully recovered and will be back at post soon, but no concrete time for his return has since been given.
Of all the unanswered questions surrounding the Vice President’s sudden ill health, the most outstanding is the mystery as to what the exact nature of Bawumia’s ailment is. The government has deliberately refused to tell Ghanaians what is going on.
Information Minister, Mustapha Hamid, has famously claimed that Dr. Bawumia was jetted off to the UK because if he had stayed in Ghana to recover worried relatives would have thronged his home to commiserate with him. The obvious lie has led to questions as to why the NPP government rushed to announce Dr. Bawumia’s ill health if the same government was keen on preventing panicky reaction.
The statement which announced the health scare had somberly asked for prayers for him.
Meanwhile, available information indicates that Kennedy Agyapong, the NPP’s MP for Assin Central, was refused audience when he visited the Guy’s Hospital and attempted to call on Dr. Bawumia.
The security detail of the Vice President is said to have denied him access to the bed side of the Vice President.
In contrast, it is said that an entourage of Fulani men from Ghana, led by Alhaji Grussah, was welcomed with open arms when it called on the Vice President at the same hospital.
The Republic has learnt that about two weeks before the sudden ill health of Dr. Bawumia, some Fulani clairvoyants had foreseen it and asked for audience with Dr. Bawumia to pray and perform rituals to forestall it.
The Vice President, whose wife, Samira Bawumia, is a Fulani, had mistaken the request for audience with him as a ploy to gain access so that they can complain to their in-law about stereotyped attacks that they keep suffering at the hands of Ghanaians.
He had therefore refused them audience, which set the stage for the unfortunate health scare.
Eerily, late Vice President Aliu Mahama, is said to have suffered a similar sudden health jolt which he never survived.
The late Hawa Yakubu, another NPP big wig of Northern extraction whose death has been shrouded in mystery years after her passing, is also said to have suffered similar sudden unexplained ailment. She also did not survive it.
Source: http://therepublicnewsonline.com/bawumia-suffered-a-stroke/