Sharon Stable After 'Minor Stroke'
Date: 19/12/05
By Jeffrey Heller
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, battling for re-election after spearheading a Gaza pullout, suffered a minor stroke and was rushed to hospital, where doctors said he was in stable condition.
"The prime minister is conscious. He is undergoing tests. His condition is stable," Professor Shmuel Shapira, director of Jerusalem's Hadassah Hospital, told Channel 1 television.
Aides said Sharon, 77, felt unwell after finishing a series of meetings at his Jerusalem office and was taken to Hadassah hospital, where he underwent a brain scan.
"He lost consciousness on the way to hospital and then regained it," one medic told reporters earlier.
Channel 1 said doctors believed that Sharon's condition was not life-threatening but that he would be kept overnight in hospital for observation and tests.
"He is conscious, speaking and joking," the television quoted an unidentified doctor as saying.
Sharon led the most dramatic turnaround in Israeli politics for decades after withdrawing settlers and soldiers from Gaza in August and September and then breaking with his rightist Likud party, saying he wanted to pursue peacemaking with Palestinians.
The television station said Sharon had been speaking on the telephone from his car with one of his sons, Gilad, when he told him: "I don't feel well."
"Dad, go to hospital immediately," Gilad replied, according to the television report
Sharon's motorcade then sped to Hadassah hospital, where doctors diagnosed a minor stroke caused by a blockage of blood to the brain, hospital sources said.
Doctors usually have a three-hour window in which to administer a drug, called TPA, to try to dissolve a blood clot in the event of a stroke.
The portly Sharon has occasionally looked drawn during the months of struggling to push through the withdrawal, but there had been no major health scares.
Minor strokes can cause temporary weakness or numbness in arms and legs, as well as speech difficulties.
Sharon is in the midst of a campaign to win re-election in a March 28 national ballot at the head of a new centrist movement he established last month after quitting the Likud party in the face of a far-right rebellion over the Gaza withdrawal.
Deputy Prime Minister Ehud Olmert would assume Sharon's duties if the event of the prime minister's disability or death.
