The former head of the Italian government Silvio Berlusconi, an octogenarian in declining health, spent the night from Wednesday to Thursday in intensive care for heart problems in a hospital in Milan (north).
Berlusconi, 86, is in a cardiac surgery unit at San Raffaele hospital, a source close to him told AFP. This establishment, located in the suburbs of the Lombard capital, is one of the most prestigious in Italy.
"He is in stable condition, he is a rock," his brother Paolo Berlusconi told reporters in the evening after a visit to the hospital. "He'll get through it again this time."
Silvio Berlusconi "will spend the night" in hospital, a hospital source told AFP on condition of anonymity on Wednesday.
"He is in intensive care due to an infection problem that has not been resolved. But he is speaking," assured Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani, one of the main officials of Forza Italia, the party conservative policy of Mr. Berlusconi member of the coalition supporting the government of Giorgia Meloni.
"Courage Silvio", launched the Prime Minister to her ally on Twitter, also sending her "sincere and affectionate wishes for a rapid recovery".
Silvio Berlusconi has increased hospital stays lately, the previous one dating back to last week, officially for check-ups.
After his release from the hospital, he posted a message on social media on Friday: "I have already started working again (...), ready and determined to commit myself, as I have always done, to the country that I love".
On Sunday, he also posted on social networks a photo of him in front of a bed of tulips in his sumptuous Lombard villa in Arcore.
In January 2022, he was admitted to San Raffaele for a urinary tract infection. In April 2021, the billionaire had also been hospitalized, more than three weeks, for "sequelae of Covid-19" which he had contracted in September 2020.
Silvio Berlusconi had undergone major open heart surgery in 2016, then an operation to treat an intestinal obstruction in the spring of 2019. In 1997, he had been operated on for a malignant tumor in the prostate.
"Courage Silvio, Italy is waiting for you", reacted on Twitter Matteo Salvini, the leader of the League, another formation member of the coalition, accompanying his message with a photo of him alongside the Cavaliere.
Despite his old age and his health concerns, the Cavaliere continues to be a central figure in Italian politics, even if his party is today below 10% of voting intentions in the polls.
He was again elected senator in the last legislative elections in September but he is hardly present in the upper house of Parliament.
The philorussian declarations of this media magnate, friend of Vladimir Putin, regularly embarrass Giorgia Meloni, who was his Minister of Youth from 2008 to 2011.
Entering politics in 1994, Mr. Berlusconi was Prime Minister for a total of nine years and dominated his country's politics for two decades, despite the sex scandals and lawsuits that tarnished his image.
For millions of Italians, it represents a golden age of the transalpine economy. His family's holding company, Fininvest, includes television channels (MediaForEurope), newspapers and Mondadori publishing.
Passionate about football, he also chaired AC Milan for 31 years before selling the club in 2017 to Chinese investors.
In August 2013, he was sentenced definitively for the first time: his four-year prison sentence for tax evasion, three of which were removed by an amnesty, had been confirmed by the Court of Cassation and he had served it on year after in the form of work of general interest, losing in passing his title of Cavaliere.
Father of five children from two marriages and several times a grandfather, this extraordinary character found a new companion in 2020: Marta Fascina, a former model 53 years his junior, and deputy of Forza Italia.
06/04/2023 03:52:44 - Milan (AFP) - © 2023 AFP
