Impeached Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua has described the moments before he was admitted at Karen Hospital on Thursday.
Gachagua said he had retreated to Harambee Annex for lunch with his team of lawyers and senior officials from the Office of the Deputy President when he fell ill.
“After lunch, we looked at possible areas of cross-examination then my team left for the Senate. I went to my office to pick my notes and then suddenly I developed very intense pain in the chest,” he said.
Gachagua said the pain continued, which made him call his doctor, Dan Gikonyo, who has been his physician for 20 years.
“I described to him how I was feeling and I told him it was intense. As we were speaking, I started to experience shortness of breath, and Dr Gikonyo instructed me to drop everything I was doing and get to Karen as quickly as possible,” he explained.
He said his staff rushed him to Karen Hospital, where he found Gikonyo and others waiting for him.
“He examined me and made a decision I must be admitted immediately for observation and treatment. After I was stabilised, he did told me that had I been late for 20 minutes, we would have been talking about something else.”
Gachagua’s impeachment trial took an unexpected turn after he failed to appear during the afternoon session when he was scheduled to take the witness stand.
Minutes after his legal team said they could not trace him, they announced that they had received information that the Deputy President had been taken ill.
Gachagua is suffering from intense chest pains, his lawyer Paul Muite said.
Muite told the Senate he was, however, not able to talk to the DP in person on the advice of doctors attending to him.
“I would like to inform honourable senators that I was able to contact doctors at Karen Hospital. There is a team of doctors who are looking after the Deputy President. Because of his condition, I was not able to talk to him directly,” Muite said.