Jayalalithaa passes away at 68

Chennai, Dec 6: Tamil Nadu Chief Minister and AIADMK supremo J Jayalalithaa died at the Apollo Hospital here on Monday night after battling for life for the past 75 days. The 68-year-old leader was officially declared dead at 11.30 pm by the hospital authorities. “It is with indescribable grief, we announce the sad demise of our chief minister of Tamil Nadu at 11.30 pm,” the Apollo Hospitals said in a late night statement.

Despite immediate intervention from London-based specialist Dr Richard Beale and experts from AIIMS, she breathed her last at the hospital without responding to the treatment. The hospital said that “the chief minister responded well to the multi-disciplinary care in the Critical Care Unit and subsequently recovered substantially to being able to take food orally”. “On this basis, the chief minister was shifted from the advanced Critical Care Unit to the high dependency unit, where her health and vitals continued to improve under the close monitoring by our expert panel of specialists,” the statement read.

“Unfortunately, Jayalalithaa suffered a massive cardiac arrest on the evening of December 4, even while our intensivist was in her room. The chief minister was immediately administered resuscitation (CPR) and provided Extra Corporeal Membrane Oxygenation (ECMO) support within the hour,” it stated, adding that “every possible clinical attempt was made to sustain her revival”. “However, despite our best efforts, the chief minister’s underlying conditions rendered her unable to recover and she passed away today,” it added, refusing to elaborate.

Earlier in the evening, the hospital authorities had termed as “totally baseless and false” reports by some TV channels that Jayalalithaa was no more. Thousands of policemen were deployed on the roads leading to Jayalalithaa’s Poes Garden residence from Apollo Hospitals. Jayalalithaa’s death led to a massive emotional upsurge across the state, with thousands of AIADMK cadres bursting into tears. It was as if the heart of Tamil Nadu had stopped. Life is expected to come to a standstill on Tuesday, with the supply of essential commodities, including milk, likely to be hit.

Jayalalithaa was admitted to hospital on September 22 with complaints of fever and dehydration. After intensive care for more than two months, Jayalalithaa was given extensive treatment for lung infection by specialists from the UK, Singapore and AIIMS. Jayalalithaa had been moved out of ICU recently, and was at a private suite at Apollo Hospital when she suffered cardiac complications on Sunday. Apollo Hospitals managing director Sangitha Reddy had said the chief minister “remains in a grave situation”.

The first bulletin issued by the hospital on Monday said Jayalalithaa was on ECMO, a device used for patients with life-threatening heart or lung problems. Born in Karnataka on February 24, 1948, into Brahmin family and named Komavalli, Jayalalithaa moved to Chennai in the 1950s to live with her mother, who was worked as a theatre artist and acted in Tamil movies.