Nelson Mandela’s wife has said the 94-year-old husband is “fine” and his health is improving after he was hospitalised more than a week ago for pneumonia, a report said Friday.<\/p>\n
“Madiba is fine, Madiba is getting better and better,” said Graca Machel late Thursday, referring to 94-year-old Mandela’s clan name, the private eNCA news channel reported.<\/p>\n
“He is in hospital simply because the doctors want to be absolutely sure that he is strong enough to go home and nothing is going to recur.”<\/p>\n
Her comments marked the latest upbeat update on the country’s first black president, who was hospitalised shortly before midnight on March 27.<\/p>\n
The admission was his third hospital stint since December.<\/p>\n
On Thursday, President Jacob Zuma said that he had visited his predecessor and that doctors had said he was showing continuous improvement.<\/p>\n
“Madiba is stable and we are thankful that he is responding well to treatment and that he is much better,” Zuma said,<\/p>\n
To help him breathe without difficulty, doctors last week drained excess fluid that had built up on the lining of his lungs.<\/p>\n
Last month Mandela spent a night in hospital for a scheduled check-up and in December he was admitted for 18 days for a lung infection and gallstones surgery, his longest hospital stay since he walked free from 27 years in jail in 1990.<\/p>\n
Mandela’s latest health scare has sparked an outpouring of wishes and prayers from across the globe and at home.<\/p>\n
“Thank you very very very much for lifting him up. God is listening,” said Machel.<\/p>\n
No indication has been made as to when Mandela could be released from hospital, with his grandson also saying this was likely only when doctors were satisfied.<\/p>\n
“We are always very concerned when he goes into hospital,” his grandson Mandla Mandela told SABC public television on Thursday.<\/p>\n
But he noted that Mandela had undergone several “scheduled hospital visits” for check-ups and monitoring in recent months and said his grandfather was in the “good capable hands” of his doctors.<\/p>\n
“We are sure that in no time when the doctors are fully satisfied with the investigations they are doing they will be sending him back home,” he added.<\/p>\n
Mandela’s lung problems date back to his 27 years in apartheid jail when he was diagnosed with early-stage tuberculosis in 1988.<\/p>\n
He has also been treated for prostate cancer and has suffered from stomach ailments.<\/p>\n
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Nelson Mandela’s wife has said the 94-year-old husband is “fine” and his health is improving after he was hospitalised more than a week ago for pneumonia, a report said Friday. “Madiba is fine, Madiba is getting better and better,” said Graca Machel late Thursday, referring to 94-year-old Mandela’s clan name, the private eNCA news channel […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[100],"byline":[170],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-6973","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-africa","byline-igihe"],"bylines":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"contributors":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6973","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6973"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6973\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6973"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6973"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6973"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=6973"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=6973"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}