MIDDLE EAST: Medical experts say Israeli Prime Minister Sharon is "out of danger" after emergency surgery

Record ID: 837665

  • Title: MIDDLE EAST: Medical experts say Israeli Prime Minister Sharon is "out of danger" after emergency surgery
  • Date: 12th February 2006
  • Summary: (W4) JERUSALEM (FILE - 2001) (REUTERS) SHARON BEING SWORN IN AS PRIME MINISTER
  • Embargoed: 27th February 2006 12:00
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  • Topics: Health,People
  • Reuters ID: LVABFE5JLN0P1310V2VRA9668MDD
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  • Story Text: A hospital official said on Saturday (February 11) that there is no immediate danger to the life of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, comatose since last month, after he underwent emergency surgery to remove parts of a damaged intestine.
    Medical experts hold little hope for the 77-year-old leader's recovery after a massive brain haemorrhage on January 4. He has been in a coma since the stroke.
    Sharon was rushed to the operating theatre after a CT scan revealed intestinal damage stemming from reduced blood flow that caused tissue to die.
    Earlier, a hospital source said doctors did not expect Sharon to survive the day and a hospital spokeswoman described his condition as the most critical since admission.
    Rumour saying that Sharon is on verge of death rushed scores of journalists from around the world to the hospital, where they began preparing for a long stay.
    An Israeli child arrived at the hospital with a sign she made for the prime minister, reading ''Kadima (Sharon's new party's name and Hebrew for 'forward') Sharon, don't be afraid, we love you, get well soon'.
    Shlomo Mor-Yosef, director of Hadassah Hospital, said that while the surgery went well, that does not mean that Sharon's general condition is any better.
    "Condition of Prime Minister (Ariel) Sharon is stable but critical. In the morning it was really immediate danger to his life, but now I can say that it's critical, stable and there is no immediate danger to the life of Prime Minister Sharon," Mor-Yosef told reporters outside the Hadassah hospital.
    "Of course such a dramatic event that happened this morning won't help him to recover. It has no direct effect but indirectly it's not a good sign and it does not contribute to the well being of Prime Minister Sharon," he added.
    Sharon's death would almost certainly leave Ehud Olmert, named interim prime minister after the 77-year-old leader's brain haemorrhage last month, in charge until elections in six weeks.
    Olmert has stepped swiftly into the shoes of the former general who dominated the Middle East scene for decades, pledging to press ahead with Sharon's tough security policies and threatening to set Israel's final borders unilaterally if peacemaking with the Palestinians remained frozen.
    Opinion polls predict the centrist Kadima party, which Sharon founded after a rebellion in his right-wing Likud over Israel's Gaza pullout last summer, will easily win the March 28 general election with Olmert at its helm.
    In the Israeli coastal city of Tel Aviv, news about the Sharon's deteriorating condition reached some of the people as they were having a picnic at a public park.
    Local resident Avi said he was worried about who will lead Israel now.
    "I'm personally very concerned about the situation -- not about the Sharon situation, I know that he will never come back to be our prime minister -- but I'll think that there isn't anybody that can get inside his shoes so I hope in a few years we're going to have really good leaders but not in the following years, that's what I wanted to say," said Avi during a family picnic.
    Long reviled in the Arab world but increasingly regarded as a peacemaker by the West, Sharon suffered his stroke at a crucial juncture in Israeli politics, as he was fighting for re-election on a promise to end conflict with the Palestinians.
    In recent years, he has voiced support for a Palestinian state but demanded the disarming of Palestinian militant groups before he would resume peace talks.
    Sami abu-Zuhri, a spokesman for Hamas, the Islamist militant group which won Palestinian elections last month, said that Sharon's death would be the first sign for the end of the Zionist occupation.
    "We consider Sharon's death as symbolising the beginning of the end to the Zionist project and the end of the generation which established it. What is happening to Sharon now is the will of God regarding this indecent person," abu-Zuhri told Reuters Television in Gaza.
    "We believe that all Israeli leaders agree on continuing attacks and crimes against our Palestinian people but Sharon was always special among the Israeli leaders with his continuous attacks and crimes against the Palestinian people," he added.
    Hamas is expected to form a new Palestinian government soon after winning a crushing victory over the long-dominant Fatah group in a January 25 election.
    The United States and the European Union have called on the group, which refuses to recognise the Jewish state and is considered a terrorist organisation, to renounce violence and disarm militants.
    "In my opinion Sharon's absence at the scene will not change anything in the situation because the Israeli leaders all have the same agenda," said one of Gaza residents.
    Scores of Israeli Jews arrived at the Western Wall to pray on Saturday just hours after Sharon was said to be out of immediate danger.
    Sharon suffered his stroke a day before he was to check into Hadassah Hospital for a procedure to correct a tiny defect in his heart that was said to have contributed to a mild stroke he suffered two weeks earlier.
    Doctors had treated Sharon with blood thinners before the planned heart operation, and some in the medical community have questioned the wisdom of such treatment because Sharon's second stroke was caused by massive bleeding in the brain.
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