In mid-December 1962, Gaitskell fell ill with flu, but he was declared well enough by his doctor to travel to the Soviet Union, where he met the Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev for talks. Upon his return to Britain his condition deteriorated after he contracted another virus. On 4 January he was admitted to Middlesex Hospital in Marylebone, where, despite enormous efforts by doctors to save his life, he died on 18 January, with his wife at his bedside. He had died from complications following a sudden flare-up of lupus, an autoimmune disease which had affected his heart and kidneys. He was 56. The shock of his death was comparable to that of the sudden death of the later Labour Party leader John Smith, in May 1994, when he too seemed to be on the threshold of 10 Downing Street.