President clinging to life

Press, 30 November 1978, Page 9

President clinging to life

NZPA Reuter Algiers | The Algerian President! ! (Mr Houari Boumedienne) | was clinging to life yesterday after relapsing into a [deep coma on Monday. The international team of; doctors treating him be-' [ lieved the next few hours! I would be critical to whether' he would survive, informed i isources said. 'I They had been considering[ surgery to remove a blood! [clot from his brain, but had: (now decided that he was too! I ill to be moved. President Boumedienne,; aged 51. who seized power! in a bloodless coup in 1965, j first went into a coma on' November 18. He had re-|

turned to the country a few days earlier after medical! ! treatment in the Soviet [Union. In Sweden, Professor Jan j Waldenstroem, a cancer specialist with the medical I team, said yesterday that Mr Boumedienne was suffering | from a type of blood cancer. : Mr Boumedienne’s wife, ( Anissa, a lawyer in her mid-! thirties who is rarely seen | in public, has been at his j bedside in Mustafa Hospital | [since Saturday. She married the President in 1974. The Government-controlled press has so far said nothing about the President's worsening condition, although it • came out with headlines yesterday urging the popu--1 fation to “mobilise itself.” Mr Boumedienne’s illness has kept him out of public I life for more than two months, and an official announcement last week said the Council of the Revolui tion had taken over execuItive powers.