Mandela, 95, discharged from hospital 'to see out his final days' at home

With his house now transformed into an intensive-card ward, Nelson Mandela has been discharged from hospital and moved by ambulance to his home in a Johannesburg suburb where he remains in critical condition.

The 95-year-old anti-apartheid hero is still sometimes slipping into “unstable” condition, needing medical intervention to revive him, but his entire medical team will now continue to care for him at his home, an official South African statement said.

A report in a South African newspaper on Sunday said the Mandela family and its doctors had decided that “it is now time for Mandela to be moved home to see out his final days.”

Mr. Mandela, the first democratically elected president of South Africa, was rushed to a Pretoria hospital on June 8 with a lung infection and continued to deteriorate for weeks afterward. Officials said in July that his condition was beginning to improve, but he remained in critical condition and sometimes needed intervention to stabilize him.

“His team of doctors are convinced that he will receive the same level of intensive care at his Houghton home that he received in Pretoria,” said a statement on Sunday by the office of President Jacob Zuma.

“His home has been reconfigured to allow him to receive intensive care there,” the statement added.

“The health-care personnel providing care at his home are the very same who provided care to him at hospital. If there are health conditions that warrant another admission to hospital in future, this will be done.”

The statement said Mr. Mandela was being treated by “a large medical team from the military, academia, private sector and other public health spheres.”

A report in a South African newspaper, City Press, said the former president’s family and medical team had been ready to send him home for the past several days, but his condition continued to fluctuate and the doctors decided that it was “too risky” to send him home.

With the region gripped by a late-winter cold snap and temperatures approaching zero, doctors had to decide whether it was risky to move him out of hospital and into an ambulance for the 45-minute journey to his home.

When he was rushed to hospital in June, his ambulance broke down and he was stranded by the side of a highway until a backup vehicle could arrive.

Reporters at his home on Sunday said the 14-vehicle Mandela convoy included two ambulances – suggesting that a back-up emergency vehicle was included in the convoy this time.

Official statements on Mr. Mandela’s health have been increasingly terse and vague in recent months. On Saturday, after British television networks reported that Mr. Mandela had been discharged from hospital, Mr. Zuma’s office issued a denial. But despite the denial, the British reports were apparently premature by just 24 hours, sparking controversy in South African social media over whether Mr. Zuma’s office had issued a misleading statement.

Mr. Mandela has been hospitalized four times in the past year, plagued by lung infections. He still suffers lingering effects from the tuberculosis that he caught during his many years of imprisonment on Robben Island and his labor at a prison quarry.

Last week, Mr. Zuma’s spokesman said the former president was showing “great resilience” and tended to “stabilize” after medical intervention.

“Despite the difficulties imposed by his various illnesses, he, as always, displays immense grace and fortitude,” the spokesman added in the statement on Sunday.