Dr. Barbara Magoha, the late Prof. George Magoha’s widow, has described her husband’s final two hours.
The bereaved widow described how her husband returned home on the fateful day (January 24, 2023) about 2pm.
She was speaking during a funeral mass for the former cabinet secretary at the Consolata Shrine Catholic Church.
She said she asked her husband to get some rest as he had been out all morning making last-minute preparations for his brother’s burial.
After resting for a while, Prof Magoha woke up and asked for a cough mixture.
She left him and proceeded to another room where she was ironing her clothing because she was getting ready to leave for work.
It was at that moment that her husband called her in a stressful voice.
“In two hours I turned from Mrs to a widow. One thing I liked about my husband is that he allowed me to grow. My professional career was something of importance to him. So I ironed to go to work while ironing I heard him calling me in a stressful voice,” she said.
When she went to find out what was going on, she found her husband had collapsed.
“His head was almost knocking on the wall, I put my hand to the wall and then his tongue was coming out. I pressed down his tongue for some fresh air. I called the workers who were there. He was revived and we put him on the floor,” she said,
“When he woke up he said, ‘I want to see my son’. That is when I knew something was not right because if he had said call me Mike that would have been different. Two weeks earlier he had said that if anything ever happened to him I should call Prof Omwanda. So when I revived him the first time I called Prof Omwanda,” she said.
“Then I called my son. I asked him where he was and he told me he is in a theatre operating. I told him to handover because his father was not feeling fine and it is best if he came home. When he arrived I told him that his father has had a heart attack but now he looks better.”
When Prof Omwanda arrived Prof Magoha asked him to check his blood pressure he then suffered his second heart attack. They then decided to take him to hospital and it is along the way that he had his third and fourth heart attacks. All this Dr Magoha said happened within two hours.
“I think it must have been one of the most stressful things for my son when he had the third attack knowing the implications. When he had the fourth attack he passed on,” she said.
Prof Magoha will be buried at his home in Gem Constituency, Siaya County on Saturday.
