2012 Polls: Nduom’s Health Disclosure ‘Schoolboyish’ – Akomea

The decision by Dr Papa Kwesi Nduom, flagbearer of the Progressive People Party (PPP), ahead of the 2012 presidential and parliamentary elections, to subject himself to a medical check-up and publish the results was unnecessary and amounted to political gimmickry, Nana Akomea, Director of Communications of the opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP), has said.

Dr Nduom, at a press conference in August 2012, challenged all presidential aspirants to submit themselves to a medical check-up and make the results public after he underwent a similar exercise.

He said in relation to his status: “There are areas that there are no problems, there are areas I have to work on, and there are areas I have to watch. Also with blood works, I requested that they should do an HIV test and that test is negative. All the blood tests in terms of the blood sugar in my blood, prostate, those things are okay.”

He admitted having cholesterol problems in his family and promised to work on it, adding: “I need to learn to take even better care of myself so that the cholesterol doesn't become a problem for me.”

He urged other politicians and flagbearers to emulate his initiative.

His call came at a time when discussions regarding the health statuses of presidential aspirants became a topical issue following the death in 2012 of then-President John Atta Mills in office.

But speaking to Moro Awudu, host of Inside Politics on Class91.3FM on Monday July 25, 2016, in connection with the commemoration of the fourth anniversary of the passing of President Mills, Mr Akomea said: “That thing Kwesi Nduom [did] was just a gimmick. It was just some schoolboy thing. It was totally unnecessary.”

He added: “If you are sick, you are sick, then you come under medical attention. As I sit here, I am not sick and, so, if I went to the hospital and said I have done check-up and I am fit so somebody else should also go and do a check-up, what is that for?

“It [sickness] is not a perpetual state of being. You go into it tomorrow and someone comes out of it tomorrow.”

Nana Akomea, however, said the National Democratic Congress did not handle the health status of the late president well. According to him, the NDC lied about the condition of Professor Mills whereas it was visible that he was not well, hence, the incessant pressure mounted on him to deliver as president of the land.

He said: “You are talking of a situation where the man (President Mills) is sick and it’s not just an ordinary man you are talking of [but] the president of the country.

"...So the lesson learnt is that with the kind of sickness that the president had, and everybody could see he was sick, he would have benefited if he had told Ghanaians what was happening [to him]. He would have got a lot of sympathy and will probably have been less stressful to him."