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Former Kenya PM Raila Odinga dies at 80 while undergoing treatment in Kerala
Raila Odinga collapsed while out for a morning walk within the hospital premises on Wednesday morning
Former Kenya Prime Minister Raila Odinga died at the age of 80 on Wednesday at a hospital in Kerala’s Ernakulam district, where he was undergoing treatment for an eye-related ailment, police said.
Odinga collapsed while out for a morning walk within the hospital premises on Wednesday morning, according to an official at the Sreedhariyam Ayurvedic Eye Hospital and Research Centre in Koothattukulam, where he had been undergoing treatment for the past six days.
“We rushed him to a nearby hospital where doctors declared him dead. Doctors said he succumbed to a cardiac arrest,” vice-chairman of the Sreedhariyam Eye Hospital Hari said.
“When he was brought into the hospital nearly a week ago, he was in a wheelchair. But over the past few days, he was able to walk independently,” an official said.
Odinga, who was serving as the country’s opposition leader, was accompanied by his daughter Rosemary Odinga and a personal doctor while undergoing treatment in Kerala.
Odinga’s remains were shifted to the Government Medical College Hospital in Ernakulam, where they would likely be embalmed.
Further steps would be taken on the basis of directions from the Ministry of External Affairs and the Kenyan Embassy, the official added.
Odinga served as the Prime Minister of Kenya between 2008 and 2013. He was perennially the country’s opposition leader, running unsuccessfully for the presidency five times, most recently in 2022. A member of the Luo tribe, he entered Parliament for the first time in 1992 and cast himself in later years as an anti-establishment firebrand despite belonging to one of Kenya’s top political dynasties.
