Nelson Mandela is back at home after almost three months in hospital PHOTO | FILE
Posted Monday, September 2 2013 at 07:54
In Summary
South Africa’s presidency, announcing his
discharge from hospital yesterday, said he remains in a “critical” and
“at times unstable” condition
Johannesburg. Nelson Mandela
is now back at home after almost three months in hospital, but his
condition remains critical and difficult days lie ahead.
While life for Mandela and his family will be more comfortable at his upscale Johannesburg home, he is not out of danger.
South Africa’s presidency, announcing his
discharge from hospital yesterday, said he remains in a “critical” and
“at times unstable” condition.
At home the former president will receive essentially the same intensive medical care as he did in hospital.
He will be treated by “a large medical team from
the military, academia, private sector and other public health spheres,”
the government said.
His home has been re-configured for the treatment.
“We can now provide the same level of care in
homes,” said Paris-based pulmonary specialist Bertrand Dautzenberg,
citing advances in devices like respirators.
Often the decision to send a patient home is made
because of a clinical improvement. But the aim can also be to make a
still-struggling patient more comfortable.
“When a condition lasts a long time, sometimes
physicians decide to send a patient home, even if he has not been
stabilised, with the aim of encouraging healing, to provide palliative
care, to make them more comfortable,” Dautzenberg said.
Mandela has at times seemed to be in a dire condition since being admitted on June 8.
He was rushed to hospital in the middle of the
night with what the government described as a lung infection, but which
may well have been pneumonia.
In late June visitors reported he was on life support, unable to breathe for himself and had not opened his eyes for days.
Court documents filed by his family’s lawyers went as far as to
say that he was in a vegetative state and that doctors recommended his
life support machine be turned off.
A close friend said that suggestion had been rejected by doctors, unless there was massive organ failure.
They were vindicated. The once spry boxer appeared to have at least one more fight left in him.
By early August, the South African government was
reporting that Mandela was responding to treatment and his condition was
steadily improving.
Since then he has at times been unstable, but medical interventions have stopped any further worsening of his condition.
The lung infection appeared to have been
contained, although doctors were still draining fluid from the lungs.
This procedure may well have been linked to a plural effusion -- a build
up of infected fluid around the lungs. (AFP)
source: The citizen
source: The citizen
