By Nafissa Assed.
Tripoli, 18 April:
Abdelbaset Al-Megrahi, the convicted Lockerbie bomber, is said to be near the end of his life. His family reports that he is now in a coma.
This TV grab from the Channel Four news website shows Abdelbaset Al-Megrahi in his hospital bed in Tripoli on August 30, 2009. (Photo: AFP/Getty Images)
The decision caused a great deal of anger in the UK and in the US — and it has not abated.
Libyan doctors say they have kept him alive with a brand-new hormone-based cancer drug called Abiraterone. This drug wasn’t even available in the UK where it was developed at the time he was released, but it had been hugely successful in clinical trials. Although it is been almost three years since he was released, Al-Megrahi is still breathing but he is barely alive at the moment. His son Khlaled said last week: “My father is on his last breath.”A close relative of Al-Megrahi told Libya Herald today that Al-Megrahi was rushed to Tripoli Medical Centre hospital last Wednesday, 11 April, after he fell unconscious and went into a coma. He spent three days at the hospital, receiving a blood transfusion, but the doctors released him yesterday and confirmed to the family that his health conditions are worsening quickly and his days are numbered. “Even if he is still breathing, he is clinically dead,” the doctors at the center told his family.
Al-Megrahi not only suffers from prostate cancer, he is also diabetic and has serious blood pressure issues, which are extra factors to his state of health. That was the reason, his family said, why he kept falling in and out of coma at his house in Tripoli. Last Saturday, 15 April, his family Tripoli was reported saying that they didn’t think he would make it next time.
Libya Herald phoned another close member of his family today, asking if it were possible to see him, but he reported: “His doctors insist that no visitors be allowed into his room anymore; even his sons or any other family member cannot go to his room, due to his terribly weak immune system. His sons and family members only greet him through the window of his room”.
Al-Megrahi has been totally unconscious for over a week now —since last Wednesday, the day he was last hospitalised. His relative said: “He never stayed unconscious for that long”.
According to the family members, Al-Megrahi is being taken care of by his sister and his wife. They are the only two people who go into his room to feed and take care of him. When he has been and hospitalized, one of his brothers stays with him. His family says it has refused to have any private nursing care at home for him.
http://www.libyaherald.com/abdelbaset-al-megrahi-on-the-verge-of-death/
