PARIS, 18 November 2004 — Doctors who treated Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat believe he died of a blood condition called disseminated intravascular coagulation (DIC) and have ruled out poisoning, Le Monde newspaper reported yesterday.
“DIC is the complete disruption of the mechanisms which normally assure proper blood clotting ... It can lead to major internal bleeding and possible death,” the paper said.
French medical secrecy laws mean that the report on Arafat’s death has been communicated only to his immediate family, resulting in a spate of rumors in the Arab world that he may have been poisoned.
An online medical dictionary describes DIC as a condition under which “blood clotting mechanisms are activated throughout the body instead of being localized to an area of injury.
“Small blood clots form throughout the body, and eventually the blood clotting factors are used up and not available to form clots at sites of real tissue injury.”
Quoting “very good sources,” Le Monde said it was internal lesions associated with DIC which led to the sudden deterioration of Arafat’s condition four days after his arrival at a Paris military hospital on Oct. 29. On Nov. 3 he fell into a coma from which he never surfaced. Le Monde quoted doctors as saying that DIC is a condition rather than an actual disease, and can be set off in a person of Arafat’s age — 75 — by either an infection or a cancer. However they had found no indication of either.
Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qorei set up a special committee yesterday to probe the cause of Yasser Arafat’s death as officials were to head to Paris to seek answers from French medics.
After chairing a meeting of his National Security Council, Qorei revealed he had ordered the establishment of the committee, including representatives from the health and interior ministries as well as the intelligence services.
