The health ministry on Sunday denied a report that Egypt's ailing former president Hosni Mubarak had fallen into a "full coma," two weeks before he is due to go on trial for murder and corruption. "The former president is in a full coma after his health suddenly deteriorated," state television quoted Mubarak's lawyer as saying.
But Deputy Health Minister Adel Adawi denied the 83-year-old toppled leader had gone into a coma. "The condition of former president Mubarak is stable and he is still being treated in his room on the third floor of Sharm el-Sheikh International Hospital," Adawi told the official MENA news agency.
Earlier, the head of the hospital in the Red Sea resort where Mubarak has been treated since April denied that the former strongman had gone into a coma, state TV reported.
"Sharm el-Sheikh hospital chief denies reports of Mubarak coma," according to a scrolling headline on the television. However, another medical source was less clear-cut, telling AFP: "It seems there has been some deterioration in his health, but the reports of a coma are still unclear." Mubarak has been in the Sharm el-Sheikh hospital since he suffered a heart attack during questioning over alleged fraud and the killing of protesters during the uprising which ousted him on February 11.
Last month, Mubarak's lawyer Farid al-Dib said the former president had "stomach cancer and the tumours are growing."
But a health ministry official said there was no proof to back the claims.
"The health ministry does not have a single scientific document saying that Mubarak has cancer," Abdelhamid Abaza, an assistant to the health minister, was quoted as saying by Al-Ahram and Al-Masry Al-Youm newspapers.