Harald from Norway is already home. The monarch landed around eleven at night on Sunday, March 3, at Oslo's Gaerdermoen airport after being transferred on a medical plane from Malaysia. He did so in the company of his wife, Queen Sonya, aboard a Scandinavian airline SAS plane adapted to carry out medical evacuations, and which has been used in the past to transport injured Ukrainians. The king was in the Asian country to enjoy a private vacation, in celebration of his 87th birthday, when he contracted an infection for which he had to be hospitalized last Tuesday, and for which the Norwegian royal house has not given any information. more details. This same Monday they issued a statement in which they assure that this infection “is more controlled” and that the monarch will have to undergo surgery again to have a permanent pacemaker implanted to improve the too low heart rate that he currently registers. “The moment of insertion of the pacemaker is determined by the moment in which the king is completely free of infection,” the royal family reported in the note, which specifies that it may take “several days” until Harald V is fully recovered. complete of his infection, so it is not ruled out that he will remain in the hospital until the weekend.
In recent days they have issued brief statements to report on the evolution of Harald V's health. “His Majesty the King arrived in Norway tonight. The air transport went well and the king is better. The king will be admitted to Oslo University Hospital [Rikshospitalet] to undergo tests and will stay there for a few days to receive treatment and rest,” the Norwegian royal house reported last night. The Norwegian Prime Minister, Jonas Gahr Store, reported last Friday that the cost of repatriating the monarch on a medical flight will be approximately two million Norwegian crowns (175,000 euros), which will be taken from the budget of the armed forces.
The monarch was admitted last Tuesday to a hospital on the Malaysian islands of Langkawi, a destination where he decided to travel to celebrate his 87th birthday in a resort in the company of his wife, Queen Sonia. Days after his admission, on Saturday, March 2, he had to undergo an operation to implant a temporary pacemaker, since he had a low heart rate. An intervention with which they wanted to ensure greater peace of mind on the trip back to his native country. After the operation, the royal house issued another statement in which it reported that Harald V is “well, given the circumstances” but still “needs to rest.” A note in which, in addition, Harald V's anesthetist, Bjorn Bendz, was quoted, who highlighted that the intervention was going to make the trip home “safer.”
As also reported by the royal house, Harald V will remain on leave for at least two more weeks; an absence from public life that he already had to make at the end of last January, when he was on leave in Norway for a few days due to an infection, which at the time they did say was a respiratory infection. The monarch has gone through several health problems in recent years, with several hospitalizations for infections of various types, such as the one he suffered in May of last year. He underwent surgery for the last time in 2021 for a ligament in his knee and a year earlier he had had the heart valve replaced, which was implanted in 2005, two years after a tumor in his bladder was removed.
Following the abdication of Queen Margaret II of Denmark, which she unexpectedly announced during her New Year's Eve television speech, Harald V, who is currently the oldest king of Europe – he was crowned in 1991 – reiterated that he would continue on the throne until his death. “I maintain what I have said all along: I took an oath to Parliament and it is for life,” he said on January 23 during a visit to the Press House in the Norwegian capital. It remains to be seen if these last two ailments in his health so far in 2024 will have made him change his mind. As has already happened on several occasions, Haakon of Norway, the crown prince, has since last week assumed the role as regent and the constitutional functions of the king. Something he has had to do more and more frequently.
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