Berlusconi’s personal physician, Alberto Zangrillo, signed off on a medical bulletin issued on Thursday afternoon that said Berlusconi “has had for some time” leukaemia in a “persistent chronic phase.”
The 86-year-old media mogul who served three terms as Italy’s PM and now serves in the Senate was admitted to Milan’s San Raffaele Hospital on Wednesday for treatment of what aides indicated was a respiratory problem stemming from a previous infection.
His spokesman, Paolo Russo, did not deny the reports when asked, and said he is “not authorised to give health info but the Corriere della Sera is the most authoritative Italian newspaper.”
A second spokesperson for the Forza Italia party leader did not deny the report when contacted.
Berlusconi is alert and in stable condition during his second day in intensive care at a Milan hospital, a close political ally said on Thursday.
“I spoke this morning with Professor (Alberto) Zangrillo. He told me that Premier Berlusconi spent the night quietly,” said Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani, who is the coordinator of Forza Italia, the political party that media mogul Berlusconi created some 30 years ago.
“His condition is stable,” Tajani said during an interview on Italian state television.
Zangrillo, Berlusconi’s longtime physician, is a chief anesthesiologist at San Raffaele Hospital, where his patient is being treated.
Family members continued to visit Berlusconi. Spotted arriving at the hospital were his brother, Paolo, his eldest daughter, Marina, and his younger son, Luigi.
The last years have seen Berlusconi suffer numerous health problems, including heart ailments and COVID-19 in 2020, which saw him hospitalised then in critical condition with pneumonia.
He has had a pacemaker for years, underwent heart surgery to replace an aortic valve in 2016 and overcame prostate cancer decades ago.
His brother made no comment upon arriving at the hospital on Thursday morning. But when he left the hospital the night before, Paolo Berlusconi said of his brother: “He’s a rock. Thus, he’ll make it this time, too.”
On March 31, Berlusconi tweeted when he left the hospital after a battery of tests that he was “ready and determined to commit myself as I’ve always done to the country I love.”
With no political heir apparent despite Berlusconi’s multiple health setbacks, Forza Italia has seen its popularity at the polls slump to a fraction of what it enjoyed years ago, when voters helped to repeatedly propel him into the premiership despite his legal woes.
Among the messages for a quick recovery was one from Premier Giorgia Meloni, who tweeted “Forza Silvio,” riffing off the soccer chant that Berlusconi turned into the name of his political party, which is currently one of two junior coalition partners in Meloni’s nearly six-month-old right-wing government.
On Wednesday, during a Senate confidence roll-call vote when Berlusconi’s name was called and an official said “absent,” a round of applause erupted from across the political spectrum in Parliament’s upper chamber.
The Senate seat Berlusconi won in September is fruit of his latest political comeback. A decade ago, he was banned from holding public office over a tax fraud conviction stemming from dealings in his media empire.
Last year, he triggered an uproar with comments about his old friend, Russian President Vladimir Putin, boasting that the two had exchanged birthday greetings. Berlusconi also has blamed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy for the war.
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