Kolkata, Jan 3 (Inditop.com) Veteran Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) leader Jyoti Basu’s condition has marginally improved, a medical bulletin said Sunday. The 96-year-old former West Bengal chief minister was hospitalised Friday after a pneumonia attack.
Basu received one unit of blood Saturday night and was still on respiratory support.
The six-member medical board constituted to treat Basu examined him Sunday morning.
“In their opinion, his condition has marginally improved. He is still on intravenous anti-biotics. He continues to be on respiratory support (external oxygen supply),” the private AMRI hospital, where Basu is admitted in the Intensive Cardiac Care Unit (ICCU), said in the bulletin.
Hospital’s executive director D.N. Agarwal said Basu remained on liquid diet and his temperature and blood pressure were normal.
Asked how long he would be kept at the ICCU, Agarwal said: “No decision has been taken by the medical board on this. Such decisions will be taken after monitoring his condition on a day-to-day basis. He is fully conscious.”
Basu was admitted to the hospital in Salt Lake close to his Indira Bhawan residence Friday evening following chest congestion and infection. A CT scan revealed that he was suffering from pneumonia.
Basu has been ailing for some time due to various old-age complications.
He was hospitalised in July last year following gastro-intestinal complications and transient loss of consciousness. Earlier, he injured his left leg after a fall at home.
That prevented him from voting in the April-May Lok Sabha poll – the first time in 63 years.
Basu also has a clot in the brain from a fall in his bathroom in 2008. However, it has now reduced following medication.
Born 1914 in Kolkata, Basu became chief minister in June 1977. He stepped down voluntarily on health grounds in November 2000.
One of the founding leaders of the CPI-M, Basu almost became India’s prime minister in 1996 at the head of a coalition government but the party vetoed the proposal.
