Prez Atta Mills was forced to hide his illness: Cadman Mills

The National Democratic Congress (NDC) hid President John Evans Atta Mills’ ill health for political gains, the late politician’s brother Dr Cadman Mills has revealed.

According to him, the presidency at the time forced his brother to hide his poor health status from the public even though he was “visibly sick”.

“My brother got very sick and was in South Africa in 2005 and he had treatment in South Africa and part of the effect of the treatment that he had was that progressively it affected his vision and affected his hearing a little bit. Otherwise, the treatment was extremely successful and he was getting progressively better. The only problem he had was [with] his vision and even that was getting better with time. We were very conscious of the sickness he had in 2005, and, therefore, he regularly had medical check-ups to confirm that everything was OK,” Dr Mills said in a radio interview on Starr FM Wednesday night.

“Now, some things were happening that I must be very honest I wasn’t happy about. Fiifi, as I called him, was very open, very honest and he’ll sit down with you and tell you in gory detail what his prognosis was, what the diagnosis of his disease was.

“He’s not somebody who will hide things, but for some strange reason, they decided that politically it was not allowable for people to know that he was sick. …Before that I went to China and when I came back I couldn’t recognise my brother. He was not even coherent. He was very visibly sick and I’d never seen him like that before and I said we had to evacuate him immediately. …We had to go to the U.S and that is when they started telling me that elections are going to be soon and politically it was not right. …That was the first time I was very disrespectful of the Presidency.

"I told them my piece of mind and I decided we had to go to the USA. What really got me furious was that they said he was going to the U.S for a routine medical check-up and I said ‘what are you people talking about?’ My brother is a human being, he’s not well. …I wanted him to take the time necessary to get well. The fact of your being a president doesn't mean you don’t get sick and what is political about getting sick, but you see the narrative had been developed for a long time that he was a very sick man, he was on the verge of death at any given time, all of these were not true.

“Whatever got him ill, was it in April or May, was something I’d never seen before. Surely enough we went to the US and lucky enough they detected very quickly what's causing it and he got much better. I was very angry with him when he came back and he wanted to show everybody that he was well. …I confronted him on a lot of things including that,” Dr Mills told Bola Ray on his Wednesday evening Starr Chat programme.

Professor Mills died in office on 24 July 2012.