Hugo Chavez is ‘fighting for his life’
Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez is “fighting for his life”, the country’s vice-president said on Friday, despite having returned to the capital, Caracas, two weeks ago.
The Venezuelan president has been struggling to recover from a fourth operation for an unspecified cancer, which took place at the end of 2012.
The colourful leader has not been seen by the public since the operation on 11 December in Cuba. He returned to Caracas on 18 February, and Venezuela’s government said he is being treated for “respiratory insufficiency” at a military hospital.
Nicolas Maduro, the vice-president and likely successor to Chavez, said on television that the president is “battling there for his health, for his life, and we’re accompanying him.”
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Mr Maduro added: “Do you know why Comandante Chavez neglected his health and has been battling for nearly two years?
“Because he completely surrendered body and soul and forgot all his obligations to himself in order to give himself to the homeland.”
The government said Chavez is breathing with the help of a tracheal tube after surviving a serious respiratory infection.
Chavez return?
Despite the serious state of Chavez’s health, a recent poll of Venezuelans suggested the majority of the population believe he will return to power.
The poll by Datanalisis, on 11 February, suggested that 58 per cent of people believe he will recover, while around 30 per cent do not believe he will return to power and 12.5 per cent say they do not know.
The president has undergone surgeries, chemotherapy and radiation treatments since June 2011, when he first announced his cancer diagnosis. He has not specified the type of cancer or the exact location in his pelvic region where his tumors have been removed.
He was scheduled to have been sworn in on 10 January after being re-elected as president last year. However, the supreme court said the swearing-in could be delayed.
On 15 February, the government released four photographs of Chavez lying in a bed in Cuba with his two daughters by his side. They were the only images of him published since early December (see, above).