It’s Not Too Late For Lungu To Step Aside If He Feels Unfit – Dr Puma

FORMER health deputy minister in the MMD administration Dr Lwipa Puma says it’s not too late for President Edgar Lungu to step aside if he feels unfit to continue as Head of State.
And Dr Puma has encouraged President Lungu to be eating regularly in order to avoid worsening his medical condition. Dr Puma says he has been following the events surrounding President Lungu’s health and felt that it would be unfair for people surrounding the Head of State to push him to continue working if he felt he could not withstand the pressure of the office.
“When a president is no longer feeling well, and his health is established not to be well, it’s better to step aside and not wait until something bad happens while he is in office. It’s being unfair to the person who is sick and it’s not too late for the President to make that decision,” he advised. Dr Puma urged President Lungu not to be persuaded by those who are around him to stay in office against the recommendation from medical experts. “Those who will continue to push the President to continue the job because they want to secure their jobs are being unfair to the man and also to the country. It is important that when someone is not feeling well, they declare that they are not okay so that they don’t continue,” he said. “What happened to the late president [Michael Sata] was very unfortunate. People will pretend that the president is jogging, he has gone game viewing and whatever, medical tourism, meanwhile the man is near death, that is very unfortunate. And I think that even the current President, what I can mention is that the best judge of one’s health is the person himself. I cannot make a decision for you, I can only advise you because yourself you can feel what you are feeling. The doctors may tell you that you look ok, go and continue working, but you can say, ‘No doctor, I am not feeling okay’. But, of course, if you feel that you are strong, that is good enough.” And Dr Puma encouraged President Lungu to be eating regularly to avoid worsening his medical condition.
“To me, some of these things don’t seem to add up because you see, for someone to have low blood sugar as a result of narrowing of the food pipe…unless somebody has not been eating. The first complaint should have been somebody not eating, someone not swallowing and having difficulties in eating and then after a long time, they can have low blood sugar,” he said.
“The fact that they are saying the low blood sugar is resulting from the narrowing of the food pipe is far from the truth, it’s far from the truth. That can only happen when somebody has been having difficulties in eating because of the narrowing of the esophagus, they should have starved so the sugar levels go down.” Dr Puma said he believed that the doctors attending to President Lungu understood the nature of the problem, and added that State House statements regarding the matter were not making sense. “What happened during the commemoration of International Women’s Day signals something serious which I know the doctors attending to the President know. They know what transpired because it is not usual for somebody, especially the number one man of the land, to collapse just like that and you take it lightly like nothing serious happened,” he said. “There is definitely something serious which needs to be addressed here. The achalasia they are talking about is very serious. When somebody is collapsing like that, you have to be worried.” Dr Puma urged State House to be issuing correct statements on the President’s health.
“It’s better to ask the doctors to do it, these are the people who are going to interpret it in the correct way. That way, they will be releasing the correct information for public consumption,” said Dr Puma.