PRESIDENT Hosni Mubarak is recovering satisfactorily from the operation to remove his gall bladder he underwent earlier this week in Germany. Hours after arriving in Berlin for talks with German Chancellor Angela Merkel it was announced that Mubarak would fly to Heidelberg for a medical check-up. On Friday midnight Egyptian TV revealed that the president would undergo surgery to remove his gall bladder. On Saturday it was announced that the operation had been successfully conducted. Mubarak was suffering from chronic calculus cholecystitis, an inflammation of the gall bladder, accompanied by gall stones and a duodenal polyp. "Accordingly, successful open surgery was carried out this morning to remove both the gall bladder and the duodenal polyp safely," Dr Marcus Buchler told a press conference on Saturday evening. Later in the day it was announced that the president had recovered from the general anesthesia and was taking semi-solid food. Progress was announced almost on daily basis from a spokesman of the Heidelberg University Hospital, the surgeon who conducted the operation or Egyptian Minister of Health Hatem El-Gabali, who is accompanying the president. No date has been officially announced for Mubarak's return to Egypt. In line with the constitution, Mubarak decreed that presidential powers be exercised by the prime minister during his absence. Meanwhile, Mubarak's schedule has been revised. A planned meeting with US Vice-President Joseph Biden, who arrived to the Middle East on Tuesday in order to push forward the peace process, has been cancelled. Mubarak, who succeeded Anwar El-Sadat as president of Egypt in October 1981, has had a single operation since coming to power. In 2004 he underwent surgery to overcome acute back pains that had had a marked influence on the president's posture. That operation, too, was carried out in Germany where he stayed for 17 days. Speculation over Mubarak's health in 2008 led to a prison sentence being handed to journalist Ibrahim Eissa, who would have been sent to prison had it not been for a last minute pardon issued by Mubarak himself. President Mubarak ends his fifth term in office next year, with many pundits predicting he will run for yet another term of office in the presidential elections scheduled for October 2011.
