George H W Bush hospitalised day after wife’s funeral

WASHINGTON: Former president George H W Bush was being treated for a blood infection on Monday, one day after laying his wife Barbara to rest, his office said.

A statement stressed that Bush, 93, was responding to treatment. He was admitted to Houston Methodist Hospital early Sunday, just a day after bidding a final farewell to his wife of 73 years during a funeral in the same Texas city. Barbara Bush had died on Tuesday.

The 41st president greeted and shook hands with numerous attendees of the event during the invitation-only funeral attended by four former presidents, including himself and his son George W Bush.

More than a thousand people attended the ceremony.

“I always knew Barbara was the most beloved woman in the world, and in fact I used to tease her that I had a complex about that fact,” Bush said after his wife’s passing.

Their marriage was the longest presidential union in American history.

He married the love of his life while on leave from military deployment in 1945, several months before World War II ended.

Bush, who suffers from Parkinson’s disease and is wheelchair-bound as a result, has been repeatedly hospitalised for pneumonia. His is a less-common version of Parkinson’s that only affects the lower body.

“President Bush was admitted to Houston Methodist Hospital yesterday morning after contracting an infection that spread to his blood,” a statement read. — AFP