Former Israeli president Shimon Peres remains hospitalized in a “critical, but stable” condition following a massive stroke, his son-in-law and personal physician, Rafi Valdan, said yesterday, although the family is optimistic he will recover.
Valdan said it was too early to tell whether there might be lasting neurological damage following the stroke that afflicted the right side of Peres’ brain on Tuesday, but the 93-year-old’s broader health indicators were good.
“All the parameters are stable — blood pressure, heart rate, blood saturation,” Valdan told reporters, adding that gave him a “certain optimism.”
“The chances of survival are pretty good. As for the degree of neurological recovery, nobody can say at this early stage,” he added.
Peres, Israel’s leading statesman who served as president and twice as prime minister and won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1994, has had minor health issues over the past year while maintaining a busy public schedule.
He held regular meetings on Tuesday and was in “perfect condition,” Valdan said, before suffering headaches.
He was taken for an examination at a hospital and then suffered what Valdan described as a “massive stroke.”
Doctors have sedated Peres, putting him into a medically induced coma.
They briefly awoke him from that state overnight and Valdan said that Peres was responsive, squeezing his hand and speaking some words.
Peres has been a part of almost every major development in Israel since the country’s founding in 1948. In a career spanning nearly 70 years, he has served in a dozen Cabinets and was twice an Israeli Labor Party prime minister.
However, even though he ran for office five times between 1977 and 1996, he never won a national election outright.
He shared the Nobel Peace Prize with former Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin and late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat for a 1993 interim peace deal, although that pact never hardened into a lasting treaty.
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