Bernadette Chirac, 83, admitted days after ex-French president was taken ill with lung infection, leading to rumours of his death

This article is more than 4 years old

This article is more than 4 years old

Jacques Chirac’s wife, Bernadette, is being treated for exhaustion in the same Paris hospital as her husband after the family of the former French president were forced to deny rumours of his death.

Chirac was rushed to Pitié-Salpêtrière hospital in the south-east of the French capital with a lung infection on Sunday, after returning from a visit to Morocco with his wife, also 83. On Wednesday, it was reported that he had died by the former minister Christine Boutin.

Speaking to Agence France-Presse, Chirac’s son-in-law, Frédéric Salat-Baroux, said: “President Chirac is being treated for a lung infection and I want to pay homage to the exceptional quality of the medical teams.”

Salat-Baroux, the husband of Chirac’s youngest daughter, Claude, subsequently told AFP that Bernadette had been admitted to the teaching hospital.

“Bernadette Chirac, deeply affected by the death of her eldest daughter, Laurence [in April], and exhausted for the past few days following her husband’s lung infection, was hospitalised on Tuesday,” he said. Salat-Baroux asked the media to respect the family’s need for privacy and tranquillity.

Boutin, the housing minister from 2007 to 2009, fuelled rumours that Chirac had died early on Wednesday with a tweet that was criticised by the former president’s family and others.

christine Boutinن (@christineboutin) Mort de #Chirac

Boutin, who was fined €5,000 (£4,300) last year after describing homosexuality as an “abomination”, defended the tweet, telling newspaper Le Monde that she had “information that come[s] from a source I considered reliable”.

She said she had passed it on because “I think it is information the French people are waiting for ... You can see that from the the buzz it has provoked.” Boutin said the “sober tweet was a mark of my mourning and my respect”.

Chirac, a former mayor of Paris who served two terms as the president of France between 1995 and 2007, strongly opposed the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. He suffered a minor stroke in 2005 and has rarely been seen in public in recent years.

Last December, Chirac was in hospital for two weeks with what his family described as fatigue, but he was said to have subsequently recovered.

The French president, François Hollande, spoke on Sunday of the country’s “support” for the former head of state “in the challenge he is going through”.

Chirac’s political proteges Nicolas Sarkozy and Alain Juppé, who are vying for the centre-right Les Républicains party presidential nomination, also wished him well.