AP Features, February 27th, 2007
Iraqi President Jalal Talabani is recovering well and responding rapidly to treatment after his weekend collapse from exhaustion, coupled with a lung and sinus infection, his personal physician said on Tuesday.
"He is improving remarkably and I can say that he is almost approaching the normal status," Yedgar Hishmat told The Associated Press in a telephone interview. He said Talabani underwent unspecified tests and that his situation was "very satisfactory and excellent."
Hishmat denied media reports that the Iraqi president suffered from a blood infection. "Those reports are baseless," the Iraqi doctor said, adding that Talabani has a lung and sinus infection that is responding to therapy.
He added that Talabani was expected to be released from the King Hussein Medical City hospital in Amman within days, after he finishes a course of antibiotics.
Talabani, 73, fell ill Sunday in Sulaimaniyah, his hometown in northeastern Iraq, and was unconscious when rushed to hospital. But he recovered sufficiently to be flown to neighboring Jordan that night for treatment.
Hishmat, Talabani's personal physician, dismissed rumors that the president also had a heart problem. "He did not suffer any heart attack. His heart is 100 percent good," Hishmat said on Monday.
Talabani last appeared in public in Sulaimaniyah on Saturday when he met U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad and Massoud Barzani, the leader of the Kurdish autonomous region of Iraq.
A member of Talabani's party, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, has said the president has a long history of fainting when he is exhausted _ a condition dating back to his years as a Kurdish guerrilla leader fighting Saddam Hussein's regime. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject.
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