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AP Photo/Elmond Jiyane, GCIS
Mandela in May of last year
# Mandela
Mandela leaves hospital following treatment for stomach complaint
The 93-year-old former South African president was admitted to hospital yesterday.
Updated 12.35pm
NELSON MANDELA HAS left hospital in South Africa after undergoing treatment for a stomach complaint this weekend.
The former South African president was admitted to hospital in Johannesburg yesterday to be treated for a long-standing stomach complaint. Officials said he had undergone a “diagnostic procedure”.
Today, the country’s defence minister confirmed that the Nobel Prize winner, 93, had an “investigative laparoscopy” – a procedure in which the abdomen probed by tiny cameras.
“There never was anything wrong with him,” Lindiwe Sisulu told a media briefing, iAfrica reports.
A statement from the the current president Jacob Zuma’s office said:
The doctors have decided to send him home as the diagnostic procedure he underwent did not indicate anything seriously wrong with him. President Zuma thanks the public for the good wishes and support.
Mandela, known widely by his clan name ‘Madiba’, is widely revered by South Africans and any changes in his health are closely watched by the country’s media.
Mandela is renowned worldwide for his campaign against apartheid in South Africa.
He became the country’s first black president in 1994 after spending 27 years in prison for his fight against the white majority rule’s segregation of different racial groups in the country.
