Berlusconi Medics Say His Health Is Improving in Intensive Care

Silvio Berlusconi’s condition is improving, even as the former Italian prime minister continues to receive intensive care treatment, according to doctors at a Milan hospital.

(Bloomberg) — Silvio Berlusconi’s condition is improving, even as the former Italian prime minister continues to receive intensive care treatment, according to doctors at a Milan hospital.

“In the last 48 hours there has been a progressive and constant improvement,” Alberto Zangrillo and Fabio Ciceri, his doctors at the San Raffaele hospital, said in a statement on Monday. They said they’re cautiously optimistic about his progress.

The 86-year-old media tycoon and Italy’s longest-serving former premier was hospitalized last week to treat a pulmonary infection linked to chronic leukemia. He’s had the blood cancer for some time and the illness is not in an acute phase, his doctors said last Thursday, when they first revealed his condition.

Berlusconi’s Forza Italia party is a junior partner in Giorgia Meloni’s government coalition. 

Should Berlusconi’s conditions worsen, the future of the party may be at risk. Even so, that wouldn’t affect the stability of Meloni’s government given her broad majority and the probability that most of Berlusconi’s lawmakers would remain within her coalition.

Berlusconi served as prime minister in four governments between 1994 and 2011.

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