Suu Kyi, Sick, Halts Campaign 6 Days Before Myanmar Vote

Democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi suspended her campaign after falling ill a week before Myanmar's special elections next Sunday.

Suffering from stress and exhaustion that reports said were partly due to humid weather in the Southeast Asian country, the Nobel Peace laureate will spend at least four days at her home in Yangon, her National League for Democracy party told reporters. While on the campaign trail in Myeik on Sunday, Suu Kyi experienced vomiting and low blood pressure, her doctor, Tin Myo Win, told Agence France-Presse.

Although her health condition is improving, her family doctor advised that she needs to take a rest for four or five days, the NLD said.

She is very weak and needs an IV drip, party member Han Thar Myint told the Associated Press. She is not in critical condition, but is very fragile at the moment and needs to rest.

Suu Kyi, a political activist who had been detained under house arrest by Myanmar's military junta for 15 of the past 21 years, is running for parliament. The elections also mark the first time since the 1990 general election that the NLD has participated openly in a Burmese vote. Suu Kyi's party won 392 of the 492 seats in the 1990 elections, but the government refused to recognize the results.

Suu Kyi is running for the open seat in the Kawhmu constituency, just south of her native Yangon (formerly Rangoon). In her campaign, she visited four constituencies last week, traveling to some of them by a small boat.

Officials from Myanmar have invited foreign monitors from the United States, European Union and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations to observe the elections amid fears that the ruling party will resort to fraud and voter intimidation.