Former U.S. president George H W Bush, who has been in hospital with a chronic cough since November, was moved to intensive care, news reports said late Wednesday.
“Following a series of setbacks including a persistent fever, President Bush was admitted to the intensive care unit at Methodist Hospital on Sunday where he remains in guarded condition,” his spokesman Jim McGrath was quoted as saying in several US media.
The former president, 88, has been in the hospital in Houston, Texas since November 23 with a bronchitis-like cough. He is conscious and was visited for Christmas by his family, the spokesman said.
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Doctors were “cautiously optimistic about the current course of treatment,” which included a liquid diet, McGrath said.
The senior Bush served as president from 1989 to 1993 and is the father of former president George W Bush, who held office from 2001 to 2009.