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BRAZIL-POLITICS-HEALTH
Brazil’s Bolsonaro ill after surgery
SAO PAULO, Feb 4, 2019 (BSS/AFP) – Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro was
ill in hospital with a feeding tube Sunday following surgery days ago to
remove a colostomy bag fitted after he suffered a knife attack late last
year.
The Sao Paulo hospital where Bolsonaro, 63, was convalescing since his
January 28 operation said in its last medical bulletin on Saturday that he
suffered an “episode of nausea and vomiting” but the president’s clinical
tests were all normal and he was without fever.
Later, tests showed that Bolsonaro had no surgical complications.
He was expected to be discharged on Wednesday or Thursday as originally
scheduled, media reported.
Bolsonaro was stabbed by a mentally unstable lone assailant on September 6
while campaigning in a crowd in a street in the southeast state of Minas
Gerais.
After emergency surgery to save his life, the far-right politician was
forced to lay up for nearly a month — but saw his popularity rise because of
public sympathy and the way the attack played into his hardline law-and-order
agenda.
Bolsonaro went on to easily win October elections and took office on
January 1. He has vowed to crack down on crime and corruption in Latin
America’s biggest country.
The leader, who is continuing his official paperwork from his hospital bed,
was reported Saturday to have been vomiting and required a feeding tube.
One of his sons, Carlos Bolsonaro, used the president’s Twitter account to
say his father on Sunday “woke up well and with energy…. Only good news in
the morning.”
The Folha de Sao Paulo newspaper reported that, according to three medical
experts it consulted, the vomiting Bolsonaro exhibited was not a normal
reaction so many days after such surgery.
It cited the doctor who carried out the surgery, Antonio Macedo, as saying
it was likely the result of a long and complicated operation.
BSS/AFP/GMR/0845 hrs