The open and transparent manner in which the British are handling the matter of Boris Johnson's illness reminds me of the secretive and confusing way in which Malawi handled the illness and death of President Bingu wa Mutharika in April 2012.

Here is what happened:

Bingu wa Mutharika, was fine at the beginning of the day on Thursday, 5th April 2012. He had his breakfast with the First Lady as usual. While in the office, he attended to some few telephone calls and started meeting some of the people who had appointments with him that morning

Then, around 11:10 am the president collapsed in the audience room while having audience with a Member of Parliament from his party at the State House in Lilongwe.

Pandemonium then ensued:

He was immediately carried to his office but at that point the he could neither speak nor respond & was breathing with difficulties. State House only had first aid kits, did not have facilities intended for the medical care of the President. So he was rushed to a public hospital

On arrival at Kamuzu Central Hospital, Bingu's eyes were closed, he was motionless, could not respond to anything and that there appeared to be no sign of life in him. He was placed in the ICU unit and connected to the machines but there was no response or sign of life whatsoever

Even the electrocardiogram (ECG) machine showed no sign of life. Its reading was a straight line, which in medical terms is referred to as “asystole”; NOLIFE.

Unfortunately, some essential emergency drugs needed to assist the president were not immediately available in the ICU such that some ICU staff were assigned to look for those drugs elsewhere within or outside the hospital.

Medical personnel tried CPR continuously for about 30 minutes, but soon realised the president was dead and that they should abandon the procedure. However, the President’s personal physician advised that the CPR should continue.

Defibrillators were also brought in to try and shock the president to induce heartbeat. These were tried on the president up to the maximum level for four times but there was still no response. After carrying on with the CPR for another 30 minutes, the staff in the ICU got tired.

The President’s physician was asked if they could stop the CPR but he refused and insisted that it goes on. As the CPR continued, it was noted after an hour that they had broken some ribs on the president in the process.

Senior doctors then told Peter Mutharika, the president's brother, that Bingu was dead. Peter told the doctors to still continue with the resuscitation efforts since the CPR procedure could be continued for up to three hours according to some medical literature that he had read.

At around 1:50 pm doctors agreed that there was nothing else that could be done. Bingu was dead. It was then decided that family members be called in to view the body. In came the First Lady, his daughter, Peter & lastly a Catholic Priest who gave the last anointing prayer

THEN THE DRAMA STARTED.

It could make for a blockbuster Nollywood movie:

"The Death of a President"

The body of the president was then covered in linen, moved to a side room and hooked to a ventilator to give the false impression that he was still alive.

A South African air ambulance was summoned and arrived in Malawi at 8pm, but the air ambulance doctor said they were not taking the body to South Africa. He explained that they had came thinking that they were evacuating a patient, which was clearly not the case.

Still, around 9 pm they moved Bingu's body to the airport and loaded it onto the plane but the pilots refused to fly because they did not have clearance to fly a dead person. They refused to fly a dead body out of Malawi until they were given express authorisation and clearance.

So the pilots demanded that the body be taken off their plane. The air ambulance medical personnel also demanded their linen back.The medical personnel from the hospital had to plead with them as there was no other linen around, meaning the president's body would remain uncovered

Discussions between Malawi and South Africa then ensued, with SA demanding to know why there was need to fly the body to SA when the president was clearly dead. Malawi said it was for postmortem and embalming, and to allow for time for preparation for burial.

Clearance to fly President Bingu wa Mutharika's body to South Africa was later given by President Jacob Zuma.

But another complication arose.

The pilots refused to fly stating that their flying time hours had expired. So they demanded the body taken down from their plane.

But Peter Mutharika, who was Minister of Foreign Affairs, intervened. He made calls to his counterpart in South Africa and after lengthy discussions the pilots reluctantly agreed to fly out of Malawi.

It was past 12 midnight when they eventually took off.

As a disguise, documents and records for the evacuation of the "dead patient" to South Africa bore the name DANIEL PHIRI. 

The air ambulance landed at Waterkloof Airforce base in Pretoria around 2:30 am in the morning of 6th April 2012.

On the evening of 5th April 2012, State House issued a Press Release regarding the condition of the president, telling Malawians that Bingu had been taken ill and had been flown to South Africa for specialist treatment.

But South Africa was not happy with this deceit.

The South Africans told Peter Mutharika that if the Government of Malawi was not going to announce the death of President Bingu immediately, then President Jacob Zuma was going to do it himself.

Finally, the announcement of the death of President Bingu wa Mutharika was then made at 8 am on the morning of 7th April 2012.

If Zuma had not threatened them we can only guess when, or how, they planned to let Malawians know the truth regarding the condition of their president

Gorily, the long time taken for the body to eventually be preserved in a mortuary in South Africa on April 6 at 5 am contributed to a condition of decomposition. From time of death, it had taken a period of about 18 hours without Bingu's body being preserved as a dead body.

When postmortem was done on 11th April, the body had started decomposing. Those in the room talked of a bad  smell and flies hovering around. The chest had turned greenish in colour and his ribs were broken from the failed attempts to resuscitate him in Malawi

After postmortem, South African pathologists requested that the body be left in open air for four days to allow the embalming fluid settle down in the body. However the body was in open air for three days only after a concern was expressed that people in Malawi were waiting.

The finding of the pathologists was that the cause of the death of President Bingu was cardiac arrhythmia (irregular beating of the heart) leading to cardiac arrest.

Clinically, he was dead on April 5 2012 in Malawi.

Officially, he died on April 7 2012 in South Africa.

THE FINAL ACT:

It was the wish of the family to embalm the body for a period of 100 years. The embalmers however advised that it was not possible to proceed along those lines and advised that they could only do embalming for 40 to 45 years.

So 40 to 45 years is what he got.

BUT THEN:

When the body was flown to Malawi on 14th April, it had to be re-embalmed because the process was not properly done in SA.

And a carpenter had to be found to fix the casket, which was falling apart in places.

The casket was a donation by the South African govern.