“I can handle it this time too,” Berlusconi vows from his hospital bed

Silvio Berlusconi showed signs of improvement at San Raffaele Hospital in Milan. Photo: Getty Images

Silvio Berlusconi, the former Italian Prime Minister, has vowed to survive his latest hospital stay.

The 86-year-old media mogul has shown signs of improvement after being treated for leukemia and a lung infection.

< p>The billionaire, a major figure who has dominated Italian public life for decades, was admitted on Wednesday to the intensive care unit of the San Raffaele Cardiac Hospital in Milan.

On Friday, Berlusconi's newspaper Il Giornale published on the front page is a photograph of a young, radiant "Cavaliere" from the last election campaign, with the headline "I will not give up"

"It's hard, but I can do it this time" Mr. Berlusconi told the newspaper from his hospital bed.

Fans from Monza, the football club owned by Mr. Berlusconi, unfurled a banner in front of the hospital reading "Forza Silvio! Monza with you."

A man sets up a banner reading «Forward, Silvio!». in front of the San Raffaele hospital where Silvio Berlusconi, the former Prime Minister of Italy, is hospitalized in Milan. Photo: Piero Cruciatti/AFP via Getty Images. hospitals in recent years. His latest hospitalization at San Raffaele Hospital came just a week after being discharged after a four-day stay.

But on Friday, Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani, Berlusconi's second-in-right, winged group Forza Italia told Rai 3 that the patient “well rested and responded well to treatment.”

When family members and close friends visited the hospital, doctors said on Thursday that Berlusconi was being treated for a lung infection and suffered from chronic myelomonocytic leukemia (CMML), a rare type of blood cancer that mainly affects older people.

The cancer was found in "persistent chronic phase" but not "sharp", they said. Acute leukemia is more severe and may progress faster.

Named "immortal" Thanks to his longevity in politics, the self-made billionaire inspires Italians with either ardent admiration or contempt, as his many successes go hand in hand with years of legal battles.

In September, he was re-elected for a second term . to the Senate, nine years after he was expelled over a tax fraud conviction.

And in March, Mr. Berlusconi won one of the many lawsuits linked to his infamous &# 34;bunga-bunga" parties, and the court acquitted him of charges that he bribed witnesses to lie about sex parties.

But an octogenarian is rarely seen in public, and he looks physically reduced.

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>In September 2020, Mr. Berlusconi was in hospital for 11 days due to Covid-induced pneumonia, complications of which led to a number of hospitalizations throughout 2021.

Former cruise ship singer underwent open heart surgery in 2016 and bowel surgery three years later.

Forza Italia is a junior member of Prime Minister Georgia Meloni's right-wing coalition government.