Shas spiritual leader suffers collapse of bodily systems, life in danger
Doctors: Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, 93, in immediate danger of death.
By JPOST.COM STAFFOvadia Yosef Shas campaign launch 370(photo credit: Marc Israel Sellem/The Jerusalem Post)
The health of one of Israel’s most powerful political figures appears to have taken a sharp turn for the worse.Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, the spiritual leader of the influential religious-Sephardic Shas movement, suffered a general collapse of his bodily systems on Monday morning and is in immediate danger of death at Jerusalem’s Hadassah University Medical Center.Medical officials elected to place Yosef on life support after he began to experience breathing difficulties early on Monday. He was defined as being in critical condition as doctors worked to stabilize his condition.“Given his illnesses and his age, the rabbi’s life is in danger,” Professor Dan Gilon, who heads the hospital’s echocardiography unit, told Army Radio.Gilon said that the positive trend in health which Yosef had experienced over the last several days had been reversed due to contamination of his blood."At the moment my appraisal is that his condition is worse. We know that he is an elderly man with serious ailments, and that does not work in his favor. Until today there had been a positive trend in his condition, and subsequently there has been a halt to the improvement - and at this moment the trend is not positive."“Throughout his hospitalization, the rabbi had a tendency to come down with infections of different sorts,” the professor said. “At first, he was admitted because of an infection, and we treated it effectively, but the ups and downs are due to the fact that this is a man at an advanced age, and he is being treated through all sorts of methods, like dialysis.”
