Former US president Ronald Reagan is to undergo surgery in a California hospital Saturday after breaking his right hip in a fall at his home the previous evening, his office announced.
Reagan, who turns 90 in a little over two weeks, was listed in stable condition at St. John's Health Center in Santa Monica, where he was brought after the accident, spokeswoman Sheri Lietzow said late Friday.
"He is fully alert, in good humor and in stable condition," his chief of staff Joanne Drake said in a statement. His wife, Nancy Reagan, was at his side and doctors have placed restrictions on other visits.
Reagan, who was US president from 1981 to 1989, retreated from public life after revealing in November 1994 that he was suffering from Alzheimer's disease.
His memories of his time as president, and his ability to recognize family and friends, have since then been slipping fast, according to US press reports.
In 1998, Vanity Fair magazine published what it described as the first official photo session since Reagan announced he had Alzheimer's. The photos showed an ever slim Reagan kissing Nancy on the lips.
According to Vanity Fair, Nancy was by then the only person that Reagan always recognized.
Reagan's 60-year-old daughter Maureen Reagan wrote in a Newsweek article a year ago that his motor skills and also verbal skills were deteriorating.
"There was a time when he would enjoy the pictures in an art book and would read out loud" but the disease had "robbed him of his ability to put his thoughts into words," she wrote, appealing for more funds for Alzheimer's research.
Maureen, Reagan's daughter by his first wife, is herself undergoing periodic treatment for skin cancer, at the same health center to which her father has now been admitted.
The former president, who is due to celebrate his ninetieth birthday on February 6, lives in the up-market residential area of Bel Air, near Beverly Hills in Los Angeles, in a house bought for him by a group of friends when he left the White House.
Born in Illinois, Reagan first heeded the call of Hollywood, where he featured in 50 films, before becoming involved in politics -- as a Democrat.
His political career took off as a Republican, when he won election as California governor in 1966 and again 1970.
In a November 1980 presidential election, he stood as Republican candidate defeating Jimmy Carter. On March 30, 1981, barely two months after his inauguration, Reagan was shot and wounded in an assassination attempt in Washington that left his press secretary, James Brady, permanently handicapped.
Reagan secured re-election by a wide margin in 1984, and in January 1989 was able to hand over the White House to fellow Republican George Bush, father of US President-elect George W. Bush -- LOS ANGELES (AFP)
© 2001 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
