The former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi has been suffering from leukaemia for some time and is in intensive care, his doctor has confirmed.
The 86-year-old was admitted to Milan’s San Raffaele hospital on Wednesday, where he is being treated for a lung infection.
“The infection is part of a chronic haematological condition of which he has been a carrier for some time: chronic myelomonocytic leukaemia,” Alberto Zangrillo said in a statement.
He said the leukaemia was not acute and that “the ongoing therapeutic strategy foresees the treatment of the lung infection”.
Sources told Ansa news agency later on Thursday that Berlusconi is reacting well to chemotherapy and treatment for the lung infection and that his condition was “an encouraging improvement on yesterday”.
The media tycoon had been discharged from the same hospital last week.
The press office for Forza Italia, a junior partner in Italy’s ruling government coalition, said in a statement that Berlusconi telephoned party officials, including the foreign minister, Antonio Tajani, on Thursday morning.
“He greeted them affectionately and recommended the utmost commitment in parliament, government and Forza Italy because ‘the country needs us!’” the statement said.
“Everyone assured him that they would not fail to be more attentive, loyal and present in following his instructions, while waiting for him to soon recover and return to being the fighter he has always been.”
Berlusconi’s family members have visited him in hospital. His son, Pier Silvio Berlusconi, a senior executive at his father’s Mediaset empire, told reporters his father is a “lion”. His younger brother Paolo said: “Once again, Silvio will emerge from this stronger.”
Berlusconi, who led three Italian governments between 1994 and 2011, has had several episodes of ill health in recent years.
In 2016, he had surgery to replace a faulty aortic valve and was in hospital with Covid-19 in September 2020. He subsequently suffered from lingering ailments related to the virus, an experience he described as “the worst of my life”.
That did not stop him campaigning for general elections in September last year, the outcome of which led to his party clinching power in coalition with prime minister Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy and Matteo Salvini’s League.
This week, he celebrated the rightwing coalition’s local election win in the northern Friuli Venezia-Giulia region.
In February, the scandal-tainted politician was acquitted on allegations of bribing witnesses in a case linked to his “bunga bunga” parties, which had dogged him for more than a decade.
Berlusconi, who claimed he was the victim of “politically inspired judicial persecution”, denied paying anyone to lie for him and said the parties were innocent affairs.
Berlusconi was ejected from parliament in 2013 after a conviction for tax fraud, and a ban on him running for office was lifted in time for the 2018 general elections. He was elected senator in the 2022 ballot.
Berlusconi also overcame prostate cancer in 1997.
This article was amended on 6 April 2023 to correct the type of cancer which Berlusconi overcame in 1997.
