Mandela Released from Hospital

Surgeon General Vejaynand Ramlakan said the former South African president is being treated for a respiratory infection but is well enough to return home.

Nelson Mandela was reportedly laughing as he was discharged from a Johannesburg hospital Thursday, easing South Africans’ concerns about the health of their 92-year-old national hero. Before becoming the country’s first black president in 1994, Mandela was imprisoned for 27 years by the apartheid regime and contracted tuberculosis while in jail. He has suffered from lung ailments ever since. Many feared that the steady stream of family members and prominent South Africans visiting Mandela during the two days he spent at Milpark Hospital was a sign that he was on his deathbed, but the surgeon general said he is stable and doctors will continue to monitor him closely. “Medically, at present, there is no need to panic," Ramlakan told reporters.