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Ex-US president Clinton home from hospital

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A motorcade returns former US president Bill Clinton home after a spell in hospital in California.
Camera IconA motorcade returns former US president Bill Clinton home after a spell in hospital in California. Credit: AP

Bill Clinton has returned home to New York to continue his recovery from an infection that left him in treatment for six days at a Southern California hospital.

The former president left the University of California Irvine Medical Centre on Sunday morning local time with his wife Hillary.

Dressed in jeans and a sports coat and wearing a face mask, he made his way out of the hospital slowly and stopped to shake hands with doctors and nurses lined up on the sidewalk.

He gave a thumbs-up when a reporter asked how he was feeling, and he and Hillary then boarded a black SUV.

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They departed in a motorcade escorted by the California Highway Patrol and headed to the airport.

Clinton's "fever and white blood cell count are normalised, and he will return home to New York to finish his course of antibiotics," Dr Alpesh Amin said in a statement.

The 75-year-old former president was on Tuesday admitted to the hospital southeast of Los Angeles with an infection.

He arrived on Sunday evening at his home in Chappaqua, New York, to continue his recovery.

Hillary Clinton had been with her husband at the hospital and was accompanied there on Saturday by daughter Chelsea.

President Joe Biden said on Friday night he had spoken to Bill Clinton.

"He's doing fine; he really is," Biden said during remarks at the University of Connecticut.

An aide to the former president said Clinton had a urological infection that spread to his bloodstream but was on the mend and never went into septic shock, a potentially life-threatening condition.

In the years since Clinton left the White House in 2001, the former president has faced a number of health scares.

In 2004, he underwent quadruple bypass surgery after experiencing prolonged chest pains and shortness of breath.

He had further surgery for a partially collapsed lung in 2005, and in 2010 he had a pair of stents implanted in a coronary artery.

He responded by embracing a largely vegan diet that saw him lose weight and report improved health.

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