Former Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon was transferred Sunday from Jerusalem's Hadassah hospital to a rehabilitation center near Tel Aviv, five months after suffering a massive brain haemorrhage. According to the AP, Sharon arrived at the Sheba rehabilitation center around an hour after he was driven out in an ambulance from the Hadassah where he had been in a coma ever since he suffered a stroke on January 4.
He was accompanied on the journey by members of his family and a security convoy, as well as medics from the Hadassah.
Professor Zeev Rothstein, director of the Sheba centre, said doctors would try to help Sharon come off the artificial respiration but he acknowledged that the prospects of Sharon regaining consciousness were "extremely thin." "We have arranged a course of treatment over the months ahead which will give him the best possible chance," Rothstein said during a press conference.
"For a man of his age who is in a coma and under artificial respiration, each stage of his treatment can put his life in danger -- that's why it is a process which takes time."
