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In Soweto, an area of Johannesburg, a resident walked past images of Nelson Mandela, the 94-year-old former president of South Africa and hero of the antiapartheid movement, who remained hospitalized on Tuesday.
JOHANNESBURG — Former President Nelson Mandela, who has been hospitalized since Saturday, is suffering from a recurrence of a lung infection and is responding to treatment, the office of South Africa’s current president, Jacob Zuma, announced on Tuesday.
It was the first indication of Mr. Mandela’s medical condition since he was flown to Pretoria and taken to a hospital for unspecified tests over the weekend. It was his second hospitalization this year; in February he s checked into a hospital for tests to address a chronic stomach complaint, the government said at the time. He was released after minor diagnostic surgery, officials said.
Mr. Mandela, who is 94 and increasingly frail, was said by Mr. Zuma’s office to be “receiving appropriate treatment and he is responding to the treatment.”
The current stay in the hospital is the longest in recent memory, raising fears that Mr. Mandela’s condition is grave. Government officials have been upbeat about his prognosis while offering few details about his condition. Given his age, any infection is by its nature serious, medical experts say.
“I’m not sure we should press the panic button every single time a man of his age has the sniffles,” Mark Sonderup, vice chairman at the South African Medical Association, told The Mail and Guardian, a weekly newspaper, this week. “But unfortunately, we have to accept that simple health matters for a person of that age can turn very serious, very quickly.”
Mr. Mandela, South Africa’s first black president, has suffered from respiratory ailments for years, in part owing to the 27 years he spent in prison, most of it on Robben Island, working in a bleak quarry. He was diagnosed with tuberculosis in 1988 and had fluid drained from his lungs.
Mr. Mandela retired from public life some years ago, and was last seen publicly at the celebrations for the World Cup soccer tournament, which South Africa hosted in 2010, although he receives frequent visits from old friends and visiting dignitaries.
In January 2011, he was hospitalized for an acute respiratory infection, and the news of that illness set off a panic about his health.
When Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton visited South Africa in August, she stopped by his home in the rural village of Qunu to see him. In a photograph of the two of them, Mr. Mandela beamed his trademark grin, but looked frail seated in an armchair and dressed in a gray cardigan.
Mr. Mandela led the African National Congress to a resounding victory in the first fully democratic elections in South Africa’s history in 1994, after successfully negotiating a peaceful transition from white rule. Despite harsh treatments at the hands of the apartheid government, Mr. Mandela advocated forgiveness and reconciliation, making him an icon of peacemaking the world over. After a single term as president, Mr. Mandela retired from politics in 1999.
Mandela Is Suffering From Lung Infection
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Mandela Is Suffering From Lung Infection
