Former US president George H.W. Bush hospitalised for shortness of breath
Former US president George H.W. Bush was taken to the hospital over the weekend for shortness of breath and the 92-year-old is responding well to treatments, his spokesman said Wednesday.
The 41st president was admitted to Houston Methodist Hospital on Saturday, spokesman Jim McGrath said
“Doctors and everyone are very pleased, and we hope to have him out soon,” McGrath said.
Bush chief of staff Jean Becker earlier told the Houston Chronicle and KHOU-TV that they expected him to go home in a couple of days.
Bush, the oldest living former American president, is the father of former President George W. Bush and former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, who sought the 2016 Republican presidential nomination.
The elder Bush, a Republican like his sons, served as vice president during Ronald Reagan’s two White House terms before being elected president in 1988. He served four years in the White House.
Bush has used a wheelchair in his later years and was hospitalised twice in 2014 - once for seven weeks with pneumonia and again for breathing difficulties. In July 2015 he broke a bone in his neck in a fall at the family home in Maine.
Bush’s public appearances have been rare since he entered his 90s. In October 2015, Bush, sitting his wheelchair, wearing a brace on his neck and clad in a Houston Astros jersey, tossed out the first pitch at the team’s playoff game against the Kansas City Royals.
In 2016 he marked the 75th anniversary of Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbour by attending a ceremony at his library at Texas A&M University where Bob Dole, the former Republican Senator from Kansas, was presented with an award for public service.
Reuters, Associated Press
