By IANS,
Kolkata : Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) leader Jyoti Basu, who was hospitalised with a pneumonia attack, was stable Saturday and responding well to treatment, a hospital official said.
The 96-year-old former West Bengal chief minister was shifted to the Intensive Cardiac Care Unit of the private AMRI hospital in the morning.
“He was shifted to ICCU for constant observation and better management,” said AMRI hospital executive director D.N. Agarwal.
Basu was on liquid diet and fully conscious. “He is responding well to treatment. He is talking. You can say he is stable,” Agarwal said, reading out the medical bulletin.
Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee visited Basu Saturday.
The hospital has drafted veteran medicine specialist Mani Chhettri as adviser to the medical board constituted for Basu’s treatment.
“The full six-member board examined Basu this morning and decided to keep him in the ICCU for two more days,” Agarwal said.
Basu was admitted to the hospital in Salt Lake close to his residence Indira Bhawan Friday evening following chest congestion and infection. A CT scan revealed that he was suffering from pneumonia.
He is being administered intravenous anti-biotics.
Basu, who was chief minister for 23 years, has been ailing due to various old-age complications.
He was hospitalised in July last year following gastro-intestinal complications and transient loss of consciousness. Earlier, he injured his left leg after a fall at home.
That prevented him from voting in the April-May Lok Sabha poll – the first time in 63 years that he did not vote.
Basu also has a clot in the brain from a fall in his bathroom in 2008. The clot had reduced following medication.
In 2007, the veteran Marxist cracked a rib after a fall in the bathroom.
Born 1914 in Kolkata, Basu became chief minister in June 1977. He stepped down voluntarily on health grounds in November 2000.
One of the founding leaders of the CPI-M, Basu almost became India’s prime minister in 1996 as the head of a coalition government. But the CPI-M vetoed the proposal.