Dear Mr. President,
First and foremost I applaud you for appointing Late Bob Mtekema to serve under your leadership. You looked beyond his health problems as others said you need to be giving those you will be hiring a health check.
I am not sure if you knew about his health problems but it gives me personally a little hope that you looked past that and maybe in future you will continue to look past those who have health problems and even more those who are disabled.
My post is not merely to applaud you Mr. President but to share my knowledge about diabetes with the hopes of reaching many.
When i read the various posts about late Bob Mtekama and the cause of death, it personally hit close to home. Don’t get me wrong, I never knew the gentleman nor did I meet him but his death truly hit close to home.
Reports circulating and those that I have confirmed say he was diabetic. I am not sure if he was type 1 or type 2 or worse LADA. I hope one day to know. Further to the reports, they indicate he had a wound and some have shown he had difficulty with his leg.
Personally I am a diabetic and so was he. Personally I injured my leg which lead me to having difficulties with my leg that til now I gave up high heels. I further had a similar issue of a wound on my leg not healing. So you may say, we had three things in common.
After reading the various posts, it was heart breaking to read how some have taken such a sad moment to continue to show their true colors by saying his death was due to some sort of witch craft. Such a shame and I feel sorry for them.
Lack of knowledge or understanding of the situation not only cripples people but it also cripples the mindset. Diabetes is a disease that can cause death due to many factors that lead to complications.
Late Bob Mtekama was a diabetic with a wound that was not healing. From my understanding here is what I have concluded:
Because of his work, it didn’t allow him to monitor his glucose levels as required and advised by medical personnel.
Because he may not have had the time to monitor his glucose levels, they may have been high which may have lead to having high Hemoglobin A1c levels.
These two factors can also cause death but in this case I do believe if his levels were high, they may have been able to bring them down. Sadly we will never know.
Because he had a wound which he struggled with over some time and due to his work load, it Limited him from seeking appropriate help during the appropriate time. It is also because of this and possible high blood sugars that his wound was not able to heal but fester bacteria as bacteria enjoys open wounds and it’s even a plus when a person is diabetic as he or she has too much sugar in the body.
I personally suspect the following:
Late Bob Mtekemamay have had high glucose levels which lead to his wound not healing which over the time he was not going for wound clean up and dressing may have led to Gangrene.
Gangrene is a common cause of amputations in people who lose limbs as a result of diabetes. Sometimes, people with uncontrolled infections develop sepsis, which occurs when an infection spreads into the bloodstream. Sepsis can be life-threatening.
If you take time and research the two diabetes and wounds, you will come to learn that wounds are the leading cause of leg amputations as the wound fails to heal due to high glucose levels.
You will further learn that taking care of a wound is both the responsibility of the patient and medical personal as there is treating a wound of a diabetic patient may not just be simply be that. The medical personal needs to take extra care as any source of bacteria is very harmful to a diabetic and more harmful to a diabetic with high glucose levels.
Mr. President and my fellow Malawians, diabetes is slowly killing us as a nation because we do not know about it. May I encourage you to have your public servants be offered frequent health checks that include diabetes, hypertension and cancer screening.
Even more may I ask you to appoint an independent Non Communicable Diseases professional who will not only look into the death of late Bob Mtekema but also find ways in which this death would have been prevented because I personally believe it could have been prevented. I am a living witness of a diabetic who spent a better part of 2014 to 2017 in the hospital because of a wound that would not heal due to my diabetes.
Preventative measures could have been met to avoid such death. His death is not only showing some of us that work was more important than health but even before his appointment to the CID department his health situation was not considered as someone who can move up and down days at a time without any side effects.
It’s a shame a great man will be laid to rest this week but it will be a bigger shame if no proper education to your public servants are done in the health aspect of their lives. Train them on how to be a better servant to Malawians by first being a servant that is well as well as that shares if any health issue arises.
This is my wish for us all.
Thank you. – Adona Walker
