Bush senior in intensive care as wife also hospitalised

FORMER president George HW Bush was admitted to an intensive care unit on Wednesday suffering from pneumonia, highlighting concerns about the health of a political dynasty’s patriarch just as a new US leader prepares to enter office.

Bush, 92, was initially hospitalised Saturday for shortness of breath, but was moved to intensive care “to address an acute respiratory problem stemming from pneumonia”, Bush’s office said in a statement. “Doctors performed a procedure to protect and clear his airway that required sedation.”

Early on Wednesday, Bush’s wife, the former first lady Barbara Bush, 91, also was admitted to Houston Methodist Hospital “as a precaution after experiencing fatigue and coughing,” it said.

“President Bush is stable and resting comfortably in the ICU, where he will remain for observation,” said the statement, posted by Bush spokesman Jim McGrath on Twitter.

Bush, who served as the nation’s 41st commander-in-chief from 1989 to 1993, is the oldest of the four living former US presidents and uses a wheelchair. He has seemed frail in recent public appear- ances. In July 2015, Bush was treated in a Maine hospital after falling and breaking a bone in his neck. The previous December, he was admitted to Houston Methodist Hospital for breathing problems.

He was treated at the same facility in November 2012 for bronchitis, spending nearly two months in the hospital.

George HerbertWalker Bush was born June 12, 1924 in Milton, Massachusetts to a wealthy New England political dynasty, the son of Prescott Bush, a successful banker and US senator for Connecticut. He deferred his acceptance to Yale University in order to join the US Navy and head off toWorldWar II, before marrying Barbara and heading to west Texas to crack into the oil business.

As a rising political star, he served in the US House of Representatives, as US ambassador to the United Nations, and director of the Central Intelligence Agency before becoming vice president to Ronald Reagan for eight years.

As president, Bush steered the United States through the end of the Cold War and drove Iraq from Kuwait, only to be denied a second term over a weak economy.