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George Bush senior in intensive care unit George Bush senior in intensive care unit
(about 3 hours later)
Former US president George HW Bush was in the intensive care unit of a Houston hospital and in a "guarded condition", family spokesman Jim McGrath said on Wednesday. "The president is alert and conversing with medical staff, and is surrounded by family," McGrath said in a statement. Former President George HW Bush has been admitted to a hospital's intensive care unit "following a series of setbacks including a persistent fever," but he is alert and talking to medical staff, his spokesman said.
McGrath said Bush snr, 88, was admitted to intensive care on Sunday at Methodist Hospital "following a series of setbacks including a persistent fever". Doctors were cautiously optimistic about his treatment, McGrath added. Jim McGrath, Bush's spokesman in Houston, said in a brief email that Bush was admitted to the intensive care unit at Methodist Hospital on Sunday. He said doctors are cautiously optimistic about his treatment and that the former president "remains in guarded condition."
No other details about his medical condition were provided, but McGrath said Bush was surrounded by family. No other details were released about his medical condition, but McGrath said Bush is surrounded by family.
Earlier on Wednesday, McGrath said a fever that kept Bush in the hospital over Christmas had got worse and that doctors had put him on a liquids-only diet. The 88-year-old has been hospitalised since 23 November, when he was admitted for a lingering cough related to bronchitis after having been in and out of the hospital for complications related to the illness.
A bronchitis-like cough initially brought Bush to the hospital in late November. Earlier on Wednesday, McGrath said a fever that kept Bush in the hospital over Christmas had gotten worse and that doctors had put him on a liquids-only diet.
Bush, the 41st American president and a Republican, took office in 1989 and served one term in the White House before losing to Bill Clinton in 1992. "It's an elevated fever, so it's actually gone up in the last day or two," McGrath told the Associated Press. "It's a stubborn fever that won't go away."
The father of former president George W Bush, he led the US into war with Iraq in 1991 in Operation Desert Storm. But he said the cough that initially brought Bush to the hospital has improved.
He also served as a congressman, ambassador to the United Nations, envoy to China, CIA director and vice-president for two terms under Ronald Reagan. Bush was visited on Christmas by his wife, Barbara, his son, Neil, and Neil's wife, Maria, and a grandson, McGrath said. Bush's daughter, Dorothy, was expected to arrive on Wednesday in Houston from Bethesda, Maryland. The 41st president has also been visited twice by his sons, George W Bush, the 43rd president, and Jeb Bush, the former governor of Florida.
Bush and his wife live in Houston during the winter and spend their summers at a home in Kennebunkport, Maine.
The former president was a naval aviator in World War II at one point the youngest in the Navy and was shot down over the Pacific. He achieved notoriety in retirement for skydiving on at least three of his birthdays since leaving the White House in 1992.