Former U.S. President Bill Clinton has spent the past two days in a California hospital due to an infection, his spokesperson said Thursday.
Clinton, 75, was admitted to the University of California Irvine Medical Center for a “non-COVID-related infection” Tuesday evening, according to a statement from his spokesperson Angel Ureña.
“He is on the mend, in good spirits, and is incredibly thankful to the doctors, nurses and staff providing him with excellent care,” Ureña said.
A separate statement from Clinton’s physicians, provided by Ureña, said he was administered IV antibiotics and fluids. His white blood cell count is trending down after two days of treatment, they added, saying he responded well to the antibiotics.
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Clinton will remain in hospital for continuous monitoring, the doctors said.
“We hope to have him go home soon,” the joint statement from Drs. Alpesh Amin and Lisa Bardack said.
CNN reported that Clinton was in the intensive care unit, primarily to give him privacy, and he was not on a breathing machine, according to doctors treating the former president.
His condition is not related to his previous heart problems or COVID-19, CNN said.
In the years since Clinton left the White House in 2001, the former president has faced health scares. In 2004, he underwent quadruple bypass surgery after experiencing prolonged chest pains and shortness of breath. He returned to the hospital for surgery for a partially collapsed lung in 2005, and in 2010 had a pair of stents implanted in a coronary artery.
He responded by embracing a largely vegan diet that saw him lose weight and report improved health.
He repeatedly returned to the stump, campaigning for Democratic candidates, mostly notably his wife, Hillary, during her failed 2008 bid for the presidential nomination. And in 2016, as his wife sought the White House as the Democratic nominee, Clinton — by then a grandfather and nearing 70 — returned to the campaign trail.
A spokesman for the Clinton Foundation said the former president was in the Los Angeles area for private events related to his charitable organization.
The UCI Medical Center is in Orange County, about 64 kilometres southeast of Los Angeles.
–With files from Reuters and the Associated Press
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