His health had deteriorated since his departure from the Elysee Palace in 2007, after a stroke in 2005 during his second term as President of the Republic.
In September 2016, he had to return in emergency from Morocco, where he was with his wife Bernadette, to be hospitalised at the hospital Pitié-Salpêtrière in Paris for a pulmonary infection. He had stayed there for almost a month, before being able to return to his Parisian home.
Renowned for its natural good life, Jacques Chirac had several alerts, so much so that in January 2014, Bernadette Chirac had estimated that her husband would no longer speak in public.
The last appearance of the former head of state at an official ceremony dates back to November 21, 2014. Diminished, the hand on the shoulder of his wife, he had arrived under a standing ovationl. The lack of media appearance that followed is all the more striking as Jacques Chirac has been omnipresent in French political life for nearly fifty years
