Zambian President Edgar Lungu is in South Africa for treatment of a throat condition that laid him low 30 years ago.
Lusaka authorities have promised they will keep his compatriots fully informed on his condition. He has been admitted to a hospital in Johannesburg.
President Edgar Lungu collapsed in Lusaka last Saturday after cutting short a speech he was making.
Doctors said he was suffering from malaria.
He was discharged from hospital on Monday and his medical staff said he was suffering from Achalasia which is a narrowing of the oesophagus.
Visiting a slum in Lusaka yesterday, Lungu said he was feeling better but needed to go to South Africa for an examination and, if necessary, an operation.
The 58-year-old joked to reporters that he hopes to come back alive because everyone likes to live.
Zambians are not amused.
They have had two presidents die in foreign hospitals these past six years.
Lungu is serving out the last two years of the term of Michael Sata who died in London last year.
Levy Mwanawasa died in a Paris hospital in 2009.
During his election campaign last year, Lungu offered to undergo a medical examination.
Zambian authorities, who have grown accustomed to treating the president’s health as an official secret, promised it will be different this time.