Would you believe it – you are sick and decide to go and see your doctor at the local surgery only to be told the surgery is no longer functioning because the doctor died several months ago?
That is the shock that greeted me when I decided to call on former Zambia Flying Doctor Service and Tazama Pipeline’s company doctor, Francis Khama, a former child-hood friend in Mufulira, who had since retired and set up his private practice located on Ndola’s Buteko Avenue opposite Collet House.
The news of his death struck me like a thunderbolt because when he and I last met in Gaborone he was so full of life he never looked like someone who was ailing.
In fact, when president Levy Mwanawasa died in a Paris military hospital in France after suffering a stroke while attending an African Union summit in Cairo, Egypt, in August 2008, Dr Francis Khama happened to be in Gaborone.
He had come to see me over a business project which he thought the Botswana government’s ministry of health might be interested in.
Apparently he had successfully developed in his laboratory a combination of drugs that he called K-Punch for the treatment of HIV/AIDS, which was helping many sufferers as it stopped various cancers, boosted the immune system and reduced the patient’s viral load.
He had previously complained that his project did not receive any support from the Zambian government despite being probably the first indigenous scientist to come up with a credible formula that was helping many sufferers who could have died but were alive and well due to the wonder K-Punch drug that he had developed.
Instead of mobilising support by way of attracting established pharmaceutical companies, including the United Nations (UN) agencies like the World Health Organisation (WHO) to help fund further research into his K-Punch, the Zambian government was threatening to have him deregistered as a medical practitioner if he did not ‘surrender’ his formula to the Ministry of Health’s permanent secretary so it could be tested.
He once showed me a letter at his Ndola office in which he was told in no uncertain terms what would happen if he did not comply. Dr Khama was not a quack masquerading as a doctor because he was among the first group to medical students to graduate from the University of Zambia (UNZA) School of Medicine, Ridgeway Campus.
As a trained doctor, therefore, he was acutely aware of the fact that no drug would be allowed onto the market or be administered to any patients without being subjected to rigorous tests by a team or teams of independent experts and verifiers.
His fear, whether real or imagined, was that if he surrendered, as per government demands, his formula might fall into the hands of some unscrupulous individual or a group of men and women with a vested interest, who would dismiss it as dangerous to the health of the patient and yet would later ‘steal his idea’ and start making money for themselves’.
I thought he had a point on this score because former Botswana president Festus Mogae, who now sits on many HIV and AIDS organizations, including the country’s National Aids Coordinating Council (NAC) once alluded to this kind of white-collar crime haunting young Batswana who submit their business proposals for funding to the country’s Citizen Entrepreneurial Development Agency (CEDA).
Condemning the malpractice, Mr Mogae, a former International Monetary Fund (IMF) economist, said he found it preposterous and extremely unfair that many brilliant business proposals were turned down only for them to be passed on to some favoured individuals at the expense of their legitimate owners.
In the light of this, it would appear to me that the ministry of health officials in Lusaka did not do much to allay his fears by providing or re-assuring him that safeguards had been (or would be) put in place to protect his property rights.
I believe it was this lack of trust in local officials that prompted him to seek his ‘first aid’ from health authorities in Botswana, a country with one of the highest HIV/AIDS prevalence rates in the world at the time.
From what he told me, and I believed he was genuine about it, Dr Khama was essentially not after making money, but what was uppermost to him was the desire to help ease the pain of sufferers of the dreaded disease whose cure continues to elude even scientists in the most technologically advanced nations with first-class facilities.
To sell his project, Khama prepared what some serious minded people regarded as a brilliant if not marvelous prospectus on the K-Punch, in which he outlined how it worked, its benefits, side effects and potential side effects, etc.
He sent me, by registered mail, copies of his project proposal to take to the Ministry of Health headquarters in the Government Enclave in Gaborone.
To do that I made an appointment to see the then Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, who later became the Vice President of Botswana, Lt General Mompati Merafhe, to whom I had been introduced by a Motswana friend Vincent Butale, formerly of the Motor Vehicle Insurance Fund (MVIF).
Given the nature of the transaction, I thought I would need a witness; so I mobilized two fellow Zambians, Kaliyangile Muluzi and Jackson Njovu, to accompany me to Foreign Affairs offices where we found the minister waiting for us before he could go to Parliament for the afternoon parliamentary session.
After being ushered into his office Gen Merafhe wanted to know what he could do to help “our friends from Zambia?”. After explaining I had handed him a copy of the project proposal.
He had been standing but quickly sat down to peruse the document. “It sounds brilliant, (Mr) Mulenga, but I am afraid there is nothing I can do; it’s outside my jurisdiction, you will have to take it to my friend at the Ministry of Health.
I believe it is something they would want to look at,” Gen Merafhe said. We thanked the minister, for finding time in his busy schedule to see us, and left for the Ministry of Health, which is some 10-minute walk away.
However, we found the minister had already left probably for parliament. So we left the K-Punch prospectus with his secretary who promised she would give it to him and that we should come the following day to get feedback.
The next morning ‘Kali’ Muluzi and I reported at the health minister’s office, as advised, upon which the secretary assured us the minister had seen the document and referred it to one of his two permanent secretaries, a Dr Sepone, who was the specialist handling all issues related to HIV/AIDS.
The minister’s secretary pointed out that Dr Sepone operated from offices in the newly constructed Government offices on Nelson Mandela Road near the Ministry of Local Government and Housing.
So we went there but did not find the permanent secretary but her secretary assured us all should be well.
“But don’t worry because she (Dr Sepone) said should the need arise, we can always communicate directly with Dr Khama himself because his document has all his contact details, including the email and cell-phone numbers,” the lady said.
So we left pretty satisfied that the K-Punch business proposal was in safe hands. Afterwards, I tried to get Dr Khama on his cell-phone number and email addresses but to no avail. I truly wanted him to know that I had submitted his papers to the ministry of health and probably get some latest developments from him on the same issue, if any.
Until he unexpectedly phoned me saying he had arrived in Botswana and was spending the night at the Gaborone Hotel, I had no clue whatsoever as to where he had been all this time. I also did not know whether health officials in Gaborone had communicated with him, as the secretary had indicated they would “if need be”.
On my way to work offices, I went to meet him at the Gaborone Hotel, which is situated near the New Gaborone Bus Rank, the equivalent of the Lusaka Inter-city Bus Terminal. He said to cut costs he would like to move to a lodge, which was likely to be cheaper. So I took him a lodge near the new SADC House, which was still under construction and whose foundation president Mwanawasa had previously come to inspect in his capacity as sitting chairman of the regional economic bloc.
I never met Francis Khama again that day because when I phoned to tell him that I had confirmed with former press secretary to the president at State House Mr John Musukuma that president Mwanawasa had died in a Paris hospital, he said: “Is that so – so mwana (my friend)  I am going back; there is a bus to Zambia this evening.”
Little did I realize that would be the last time he and I were to communicate on this earth, dear reader, because on my next visit to Ndola I could not find him anywhere.
I could not visit him at home because I did not know he was staying because he used to commute daily between Ndola and Luanshya where he had secured some accommodation, I was told later.
Next time I was feeling unwell, I decided to do the obvious: Go to my friend’s surgery for my routine medical check-up. But what do I find? A sign on the wall, declaring: ‘Telnor Laboratories’. What is going on? Have they moved to new premises?
As I stood at the foot of the stairs and looking perplexed, a messenger/security guard who must have recognized me as old patient and his former boss’s mate, suddenly appeared from upstairs and said:
“Shikulu (Mr or mogolo) bushe mulefwaya abanenu? Chabulanda, ichipatala twalisala pantu ba bashing’anga ba Khama balifwa.  Twaba shikile ku Mufulira pantu bankashi yabo baliyisa senda icitumbi”( Bemba) meaning:
(Sir, are you looking for your friend? Sorry, the surgery is closed; we have new owners here now because Dr Khama died a long time ago. His sister came from Mufulira to collect the body; so we buried him in Mufulira).
As I stood there in deep shock, I remembered the words of the much verified Cecil John Rhodes, who even went to extent of cheating African chiefs out of their land in the name of Queen Victoria of Britain. Yes, Dr Khama had “so much to do but so little done”.
Trained by Government using tax-payer’s money, he set out on a mission to serve fellow Zambians and non-citizens facing certain death from HIV/AIDS and other afflictions
Dr Khama must have died a frustrated local scientist who attempted the seemingly impossible to save countless lives. Like America’s celebrated neurosurgeon Ben Carson, MD, and author of Think Big, Dr Khama struggled to beat the odds, but got little or no help at all. What a shame for a country striving to develop its own corps of medical gurus.
In my opinion Dr Francis Khama was an extraordinary and a splendid role model for young Zambian medical students engaged in research either at the University Teaching Hospital (UTH) in Lusaka, Ndola’s Tropical Disease Research Centre (TDRC) or elsewhere in the country he came to love and serve with a passion. MHSRIP.
(Comments to: alfredmulenga777@gmail.com)