Bolsonaro hospitalized again due to intestinal blockage

São Paulo, Jan 3 (EFE).- Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro has been hospitalized again with an intestinal blockage, but his condition was improving, doctors said Monday.

Bolsonaro, 66, has been in hospitals several times after he was stabbed in the abdomen during his 2018 presidential campaign.

He is at the Vila Nova Star hospital, where he was treated during a four-day stay in July last year.

A hospital statement said Bolsonaro was improving, but the doctors treating him had not taken a final call yet on a possible surgical intervention to remove the blockage.

The president tweeted his photo on his hospital bed, showing a thumbs-up sign and a nasogastric tube on his nose.

Bolsonaro wrote that he began to feel unwell on Sunday after having lunch.

The far-right politician was flown to São Paulo from the southern state of Santa Catarina, where he was on his holidays and was urgently admitted to the hospital.

The president said he would have to undergo “more tests for a possible surgery (to remove) the internal blockage in the abdominal region.”

Bolsonaro recalled that the problems stem from the attack on Sep.6, 2018, when he was stabbed in the abdomen during his electoral campaign.

Police arrested the attacker immediately.

But a Brazilian judge acquitted him due to his mental condition and ordered him held in a facility indefinitely.

The president’s last public appearance was on Friday when his office aired his recorded end-of-year message.

His term will end on Dec.31 this year.

Bolsonaro intends to seek a fresh mandate in the Oct.2 elections this year.

But opinion polls project him a long distance from the current favorite, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, a former president and leader of the Brazilian left.

Bolsonaro’s government has faced widespread criticism for its response to the coronavirus pandemic and the country’s economic downslide. EFE

ag-cm/ssk