Former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, who remains in the intensive care unit of a Milan hospital, has been diagnosed with leukemia. As confirmed by sources close to the Reuters agency and the ‘Corriere della Sera’, who was on several occasions head of the Italian Executive suffers from this blood cancer. Berlusconi, 86, was admitted this Wednesday to the San Rafael Hospital in Milan, after he showed trouble breathing.
Berlusconi returned to the hospital after being discharged a week ago, where he was accompanied by his girlfriend, Marta Fascina, who is 54 years younger than him. Berlusconi published this past Sunday a photo on his profile on social networks in which he was He looked in the middle of a meadow full of tulips at his villa in Arcore, on the outskirts of Milan. With his usual close tone, which led him to become the protagonist of Italian politics, society and the economy, the former ‘Cavaliere’ commented that he likes “all flowers, but especially tulips because of the variety of colors”.
In recent years, Berlusconi has experienced various hospitalizations due to the worsening of his health after contracting Covid-19 in September 2020. That infection caused him pneumonia that left him very weak, aggravating some of the ailments he already had, such as a chronic inflammatory pathology and heart problems that have forced him to wear a pacemaker for years. In January 2022 he also suffered a serious urinary tract infection that forced him to spend a new period admitted to San Raffaele.
Berlusconi’s hospitalization causes anxiety in Italy due to the implications it could have for the conservative coalition that supports the Meloni government. Although almost three decades have passed since his first electoral victory in 1994, he has never wanted to have a successor as leader of Forza Italia, to the point that he has been striking down the successive ‘dolphins’ that emerged in the center right, such as Pierferdinando Casini, Gianfranco Fini or Angelino Alfano.
